It's open season for idiots

Facebook has proven to be an interesting social experiment, that now, much like the theoretical infinite amount of monkeys on an infinite amount of typewriters with an infinite amount of time, is reaching its limits. (Although, to digress refer to my previous point, I've only found that its theoretical having tried to replicate it. Much to my frustration, storage space for even a large amount of monkeys is prohibitively expensive, and I dread to think how much I've spent on literally thousands of typewriters - and all for nothing. One of them got close to writing the first three chapters of The Da Vinci Code, but it then simply descended into a random series of characters and punctuation symbols. Which was heartening in the regard that Monkey 118255 had figured out how the shift key worked, but meant the whole experiment had ultimately failed. And I'm a busy man - an infinite amount of time is simply beyond my means. My work has deadlines.)

Those of you that use facebook, which given that most of you have found this blog through it is the vast majority of you, can't help but have noticed the surprising amount of scam links that crop up on a daily basis in the mass of news feeds you get. And the almost equal number of posts linking to sophos warning you not to click on these scam links from a well meaning group of people that the majority of you stupidly ignore.

You've all seen them.

"Girl commits suicide before a cam after breakup" - This one is even occasionally sponsored by the BBC, so it must be genuine, right?  Well, ignoring the fact that if you want to see a suicide on facebook then there is something clearly wrong with you, it's a scam, pure and simple.

"Want to see how many people have got you blocked on facebook?". Well, click on this link and you can take it as read that if I'm on your friends list, that this list will then suddenly include me. You fucking idiot.

Like clicking on random links?  Then you're a prick, pure and sample. If you do, you're the sentient equivalent of a virus and your disease will spread through people just as stupid, ignorant and naive as yourselves. A Stupid virus, if you will. And the Stupid Virus is growing. You're the 21st century equivalent of sending out computer virus warnings in emails about viruses that couldn't possibly exist.

It's not even complicated. See something you're not sure about?  Don't just click on it like some braindead metronome - Google it. You're in front of a computer and have all the tools at your disposal, so fucking use them. Please don't click on it, spread the damn thing out to all your friends and then have to delete the post once one of the more sensible and computer literate of them points out your idiocy. Again and again.

Don't be one of those infinite number of monkeys. You're an intelligent human being with the capacity to reason, and more to the point, to be suspicious. However, if you ARE one of those monkeys, I have an unfinished experiment that you're more than able to assist with. Simply click on the link on facebook that I'll be posting shortly - once you've clicked on it you'll have to click on something to allow it to read your wall, but don't let that worry you. After all, you've never worried about it before.

And the beauty of this system is - all your friends will know that you're participating too.