Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s film The Social Network had a tidy little weekend this weekend scooping up $22.5M. I enjoyed the film very much but this post isn’t about that.

I saw the film, as I see most of the films I see, at the Alamo Drafthouse. The Drafthouse is an Austin institution (coming soon to a New York near you?) that along with serving beer and pub grub (or better) while you watch the movie is known for the special event programming and for their custom made pre-shows. Tim League and his minions cut together preshow montages relevant to the feature you are about to see. In the case of say Spiderman III: The Wrath of Plot you might see the Turkish Spiderman and a clip from Spider man and his Amazing friends and something from Electric Company…

For The Social Network we were pretty much bombarded with Youtube haha funny about Facebook. I laughed because we all laugh at the annoyances – the Farmville updates, the “my cat pooped yellow” updates, you Mom posting pictures of you asleep in your spaghetti, poking, strangers who think you should remember them from 25 years ago….

As the barrage went on I started to get progressively more annoyed.

Every new tool that has arisen in the last decade or so has gone through its cycle from underground to up and coming, to hot new thing, to unstoppable force, to mainstream, to backlash, to left behind with the same sorts of complaints. Everyone wants to claim that they love the tool for connecting with people but hate the annoyances.

Please.

Stop letting yourself off the hook.

FACEBOOK IS PEOPLE
TWITTER IS PEOPLE
MYSPACE [was] PEOPLE
DRIVING IS PEOPLE
WALKING IS PEOPLE
EATING OUT IS PEOPLE

/Heston

You don’t hate Mafia Wars. It’s really innocuous. You hate that your “friends” can’t figure out how to operate Mafia Wars in such a way that you don’t have to hear about it.

You don’t “hate” anything you can ignore.

Facebook isn’t what posts 17 nominally different blurry images of a 6 weeks old wiggling. That’s your cousin Vera.

Facebook didn’t post 6 hours worth of Pantera lyrics (I mean 6 hours? I they played them all back to back it wouldn’t be 6 hours would it?) that would your buddy Chris from high school.

You don’t hate restaurants because some couple decided to take three children out on their Date Night and not really bother parenting because they need a little break. You hate irresponsible parents.

We don’t bitch about cars sucking because people tailgate or cut us off install undercar lighting and horns that play Creed. We admit out loud that people suck and we hate them.

So take the next step and add: even people that I know, like, even LOVE sometimes suck and don’t know how to not be annoying.

It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.