Thought this might be of interest to some of you. I guess a new way to release raw energy that doesn't involve breaking your keyboard or strangling the base of your monitor or smashing your laptop on the wall
It's got a really humorous side to it all if you think of it.
"People are yearning to express the ridiculousness of some of the
features of Facebook -- having all these friends that aren't genuine,"
says Kevin Matulef, the designer of Enemybook. (Pat Greenhouse / Globe
Staff Photo)By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | October 10, 2007
Now that Internet users have forged
online relationships with the people they like, they can turn their
attention to shaming the folks they hate.
With Enemybook, a new program that runs on the social networking
site Facebook, you can connect to people you loathe, display their
photos and evil deeds, and give them the virtual finger.
Enemybook
is one of several new online applications developed by computer-savvy
twentysomethings who say they are tired of bogus online friendships. In
a dig at the notion of virtual networking, they hope to encourage
people to undermine, or at least mock, the online social communities
sites such as Facebook were designed to create.
Over the summer,
Kevin Matulef, who is doing a doctoral thesis on algorithms at MIT,
designed Enemybook, a software application that lets people list
enemies below friends on their personal Facebook page. He describes the
program as "an antisocial utility that disconnects you to the so-called
friends around you."
Matulef, 28, got the idea from
undergraduates at the dorm where he tutors, after hearing one student
talk about how someone was a "Facebook friend," but not a "real
friend." (Facebook users sign up for a profile and can request friends
through different networks -- high school, college, or at random. Some
users have even created fake profiles for celebrities).
At the time, Matulef joked that maybe the two students should be Facebook enemies instead. And Enemybook was born.
"People
are yearning to express the ridiculousness of some of the features of
Facebook -- having all these friends that aren't genuine," Matulef
said. "For some people, Enemybook is about expressing their distaste
for political figures or celebrities. And for other people, it actually
is about spreading hatred for their despised co-workers and exes."
Since
May, Facebook has opened its platform and allowed developers to build
applications to run on its site. According to Facebook's website, more
than 3,000 applications have been built on the platform and 100 new
ones are added each day. The most popular, a utility to highlight a
user's best friends called Top Friends, has 3.1 million daily active
users.
Enemybook is not in that stratosphere. It currently has
1,200 users, who cumulatively have recorded nearly 2,300 acrimonious
relationships. Many people are "enemying" fake Facebook profiles for
public figures and celebrities. So far, Matulef has the most foes,
followed by President Bush, British rock band Coldplay, Republican
gadfly Ann Coulter, and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief
executive of Facebook (and a Harvard dropout).
"It seems worth
pointing out that Facebook was initially developed at Harvard; MIT had
to counter with something," Matulef quipped.
Others have taken
Enemybook more seriously, using it to publicly express their distaste
for exes, bad bosses, and former friends.
"How many times have you been friend
requested by someone you don't even like, know isn't really your
friend, battle on a day to day basis, and is really your sworn enemy
who is just friending you to discover your weakness," read a petition
circulated by David Newkirk, who started a group on Facebook last year
called "Official Petition to Facebook for an 'Enemies List."'
Now armed with Enemybook, Newkirk, 19, a sophomore at the University
of North Carolina in Wilmington, has listed six nemeses, including a
former roommate, whose enemy details include hooking up with Newkirk's
best friend, insulting Newkirk's dignity, and living with Newkirk and
not getting along.
"Any person who rubbed me the wrong way, or
showed disrespect will not be able to escape the electronic
acknowledgement of their wrongdoings through Enemybook," Newkirk said.
A Facebook spokeswoman would not comment on Enemybook. Zuckerberg did not return messages posted to his Facebook account.
Enemybook is not the only asocial utility available on Facebook.
Snubster, which has allowed users to alienate each other since 2006 on its own website, Snubster.com, recently launched an application on Facebook.
With
Snubster, you can put people "On Notice," give them an opportunity to
redeem themselves, set a deadline, and if they fail to clean up their
act, list them as "Dead to Me."
Bryant Choung, 26, a software
engineer in Washington, D.C., who created the program, said he was
bothered that Facebook had become little more than an online popularity
contest and designed Snubster to provide "a backlash against the
ridiculous phenomenon that was social networking."
"It's nice
because Snubster was supposed to be a parody of Facebook, and by being
able to work directly in and around Facebook makes it work so much
better," Choung said.
The act of online snubbing can have its
perils. Last month, Choung received a request from a man to remove a
snub made by someone he was suing. At first, Choung told him to contact
the person directly so they could resolve it on their own. But after a
few rounds of e-mails, Choung decided removing the snub was the easiest
way not to be involved.
"People have always been mean and petty
and now, with the culture of putting everything online and the reality
shows that thrive on voting people off the island or telling people
you're fired, it's not surprising that people want to blast their
enemies to the world," said Patrice Oppliger, assistant professor of
mass communications at Boston University.
"The entertainment of being mean is almost elevated to a new level."
Still,
there are the tactical drawbacks of enemying. Enemybook allows Facebook
users to add enemies who are not their friends. But only people who are
already friends receive notification when they are added to the enemy
list. Enemies you have never liked never find out about your wrath.
Despite the potential pitfalls, some Facebook users think Enemybook and Snubster are long overdue.
Helen
Parker, of London, said she used Enemybook to go after school bullies,
bad bosses, and friends of friends she dislikes, listing secrets about
their behavior. But then, the 24-year-old student at Aberystwyth
University, had a change of heart and deleted her enemies.
"It just seemed a bit petty," Parker said. "Plus, not enough people I hate are on Facebook."