Status: Facebook doomed!

The end is nigh! Robert Frost suggested the world would either end in fire or in ice, and T.S. Eliot postulated it would end not in a bang but in a whimper. They’re both wrong: It ends with a click!

This week, the mad demigods of technology have unveiled an “advance” that holds the potential to destroy humankind and all we hold dear. Once activated, there will be no stopping it, no negotiating with it, merely the icy hand of death as our world is ripped apart by forces beyond our comprehension. Oh, sure, they might claim that this is all doom-mongering, that their intentions are benevolent and the experiment harmless, that everything is under control. But such arrogance shall reap naught but tragedy, and the piper will demand payment of us all!

What’s that? Am I referring to particle super-colliders? Hadrons? Switzerland? Huh? What are you talking about? Who cares about that? No, I speak of the most perilous technological development since the atomic bomb, the final judgment for our civilization: the new Facebook!

You appear skeptical. But that is only because founder Mark Zuckerberg and his minions have lulled you into a false sense of security. Based on careful observation and hours upon hours of Facebook-based research, I have developed a theory that reveals unequivocally that this week’s implementation of the new Facebook format will destroy the human race as we know it.

Facebook might appear to be a Web site that, like any other Web site, exists on computers powered by electricity. But in reality, Facebook is fed by a far more elusive force: time. Have you ever noticed how, after logging in just to see whose birthday might be today, you suddenly realize that it’s two hours later and you’re looking at photos of someone’s summer vacation? It’s no trick of the mind: Facebook gobbles up time particles, cows eat grass, cats eat mice and pandas eat turtles.

When Facebook adopted its news feed, the site’s appetite grew; then, when its membership expanded beyond college students, it became hungrier still. Some of us tried to stop the insanity, to warn you before it was too late, but we became entangled in that application where you take a quiz to determine which character from Lost you are or the one where you hand out bumper stickers.

But now the threat is imminent. Once the creators of Facebook unleash this latest update, it will open a temporal black hole from which no force on earth can escape: not for homework, not for class, not for a job, not even for meals. Humanity will wither as individuals find themselves violently pulled between checking status updates, tagging photos, making comments and petting (fluff) friends. There will be no logging out.

If you wish to save our species, the only thing left to do is join one of the many groups protesting against the new Facebook. I’ll be right there with you, just as soon as I’ve finished tending my (Lil) Green Patch.