Now You Can Send Your Friends Electronic Boobies!!
After a little persuasion from my husband and a few close family members, I finally decided to join Facebook last week. Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
What I didn’t realize about Facebook before I signed up, was that it is much more then just putting up a profile, uploading pictures and getting back in touch with old friends. Facebook includes hundreds if not thousands of “applications” that you actually “add” to your page. The applications are anything from adding “the quote of the day” to your page, to adding little “stickers,” various quizzes that you can take to test your knowledge on different subjects, to sending and receiving various “gifts” to and from your friends. The “gifts” include anything from flowers, to little hatching eggs, to drinks, to “karma.”
As I was learning the ins and outs of Facebook over the last two weeks, I was browsing the pages of my friends, and to my surprise and shock, one of my friends had received various “boobies” from her friends. I learned quickly that people are sending each other photos of different breasts and adding the photos straight to their page. After my shock wore off a bit, I decided to take a closer look at this facebook “application.” In order to do this, I had to add the application to my page. So, I pressed the button to add the application, did my research, and quickly deleted the application before anyone noticed that I added it. What I found through my five minutes of research was that there were about 45 different types of “boobies” that you could send and receive. A few of the boobies included the following:
Motivational Boobies
Fake Boobies (though ALL of the boobies were fake, so I really didn’t get that one.)
Sporty Boobies
Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I found this particular application extremely annoying, to say the least. Who, but an immature teenager would think receiving and sending photos of fake breasts is interesting, cool, or “okay” for that matter? Aren’t we inundated with fake breasts ENOUGH? What is this teaching the millions of teenagers that are part of Facebook, that women’s bodies and breasts are just objects? Come on Facebook, you can do better.
We should start a Facebook protest page. Don’t they do ANY screening of the apps being developed for their Network? I’m sure if there was one for hard porn, they’d make sure it wasn’t out there pretty darn fast!
Comment by Gloria — July 3, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
Gloria- I was telling a few of my friends about this particular application, and we were all disgusted, of course. But, I was telling them that I thought maybe there should be an application where we could send each other men’s genitalia (for motivational purposes, of course.) Maybe then people would start to understand how degrading this is.
Comment by Krista — July 3, 2008 @ 12:48 pm
I’m just kind of laughing at the thought of having friends send me men’s parts. Ew. It’s more horrifying than funny I guess. I went to the movies a few months ago and was unpleasantly surprised when a man’s little man appeared on the screen not once, but 3+ times. I’m really hoping this doesn’t become commonplace.
Comment by Kacey — July 3, 2008 @ 12:55 pm
Horrifying! I’ll admit neither of our special places are ‘attractive’ in appearance, but its supposed to be about the action and affect and not the view! I still think its society’s fear of not being like everyone else, or not being ‘perfect’…Anyway this is really a bizarre or silly choice but I believe I had heard of something like this a year or so ago…
Comment by Dennis — July 3, 2008 @ 9:16 pm
i did notice a friend of mine had a protest page for some things, i think that is a good idea. or let’s send our friends penises? ew!!
Comment by gretchen — July 4, 2008 @ 11:22 am
I think this is one of the many reasons I prefer myspace.
I have a facebook account and I think that I’ve logged on about 3 times in the last 6 months.
Comment by bethtaylor — July 4, 2008 @ 11:14 pm
Beth- I think myspace is just as bad, if not worse. Many of my friends refuse to join myspace because they think it is corrupt. There are SO MANY “want to be” models on myspace, putting up any picture that they think is going to give them the attention they want, many of their photos and pictures and just plain nasty. You have to be really careful of what you are clicking on on myspace, or you may end up looking at something you never intended to! I’m sure people have other examples of how myspace can be really bad. It’s just part of our society now, with the age of the Internet!
Comment by Krista — July 5, 2008 @ 9:29 am
Myspace no doubt is just as bad and that is why I deleted my account a while ago but recently joined again for ‘networking’ purposes. Krista, I just ignore those pictures as I know what those women are doing.
The thing that makes me more nervous than anything is if you click on certain things your account can be hacked. I became very nervous about this with my computer background. Now I just try and keep it to friends on myspace and never click on anything!
I think what is more important is what we hear in the news about young girls being stalked on myspace. I know that if I had a daughter, I would not allow her to have a myspace account or I would monitor her computer usage very closely. The internet has opened up a entirely new world for pedophiles!
Comment by bethtaylor — July 7, 2008 @ 7:13 am
Let’s start sending one another shots of men’s “packages.” You know — just the bulge. ;o)
Or we could make a little animation that shows natural boobs popping out to weird implanted boobs then exploding. That would get some attention.
Comment by Suzanne — July 9, 2008 @ 9:26 am
You called them fake breasts. Breasts come in all shapes and sizes, some of us naturally have breasts that are similar to those you posted from Facebook. Try not to assume that they’re fake, I assure you that some come naturally. I’ve used mine to breastfeed two babies for 2.5 years and I’m going on to breastfeed #3. Mine are functional and I like how they look.
As for the facebook application, I wish more users realized that potential employers look at their pages. When I help out with hiring, I absolutely check out facebook and myspace and run google. Some of the things I find answer a lot of questions honestly. Sending and receiving “boobs” sends a message.
Comment by VoiceUpNorth — July 17, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Good Point….but I am pretty darn sure that THESE particular photos of breasts are fake. I have no doubt that a lot of women have very nice looking breasts…naturally. But, it is VERY obvious that these breasts are fake.
Comment by Krista — July 17, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
I understand where the majority of you are coming from; many applications are offensive and degrading, but to an extent. ‘Sending Boobs’ is a merely a teen’s game, a comical source of amusement. I think it unfair to degrade Facebook based on the product of the immaturity of a few thousand teenagers.
Comment by Duncan — February 28, 2009 @ 10:12 pm