What does one do with those annoying weirdos, who suddenly spring out of nowhere and demand a wholly undeserved friending? That is probably the biggest dilemma most social networking enthusiasts face these days. Be it Orkut, Myspace or Facebook, post your profile and within days you’d find your pages swamped with a barrage of random people wanting to befriend you. Then again, what about people you dislike? Where is there place to display their despicable deeds to the world?
Ignoring these requests is an option of course, but you can do better now thanks to the hip new anti-social sites, which let you express your disgust for people online. Snubster (www.snubster.com) for example is one such avenue floated by a techsavvy teen, Bryant Choung, who was fed up of people bombarding him with claims of fake online friendships. In a dig at the notion of virtual networking, he built a site that lets members create public lists of people and things that infuriate them. Simply put, this site lets you connect to people you loathe, display their pictures and evil deeds, and show the world how much you hate them.
Unlike social networks which are built around the idea of bringing together people with similar likes or dislikes, Snubster focuses on what irritates people. The objects of discontent here include individuals (your ex), groups (people talking on thir phone during movies) and even things (dirty urinals). Besides storing hate-lists, the site also has a tool for sending emails to people added to a list to tell them why they are being snubbed.
Other features include putting people ‘on notice’, and giving them an opportunity to redeem themselves. You can even set a deadline to these notices, and if they fail to clean up their act, you can add them to your ‘Dead to Me’ list.
The site has also recently created an interface for Facebook, and people seem to be lapping up the idea. There are all kinds of people flaunting endless hate-lists on their pages. For some these hate-lists are about expressing their distaste for celebrities or political figures. While others have taken the lists to a more personal level, using them to publicly express their disgust for foes, their ex and even bad bosses.
Snubster however is not the only anti-social network available. Having found that shared hates can be an equally effective bonding tool amongst people, there is a crop of such networks on the rise.
Others include Isolatr (www.isolatr.com), a parody site that promises to ‘help you find where other people are not’, Introverster (www.introverster. com), that touts to be ‘an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing you online’, and Enemybook, which itself as ‘an antisocial utility that disconnects you to the so-called friends around you’.
Enemybooks also plugs into Facebook and lets you lets you list enemies below friends on your profiles. This is basically meant to suggest that people who add each other aren’t necessarily ‘friends’.
These sites may bring some much needed respite to the online socialising, but there are some gaping holes in the tools for virtual enemying. Enemybook for instance allows Facebook users to add enemies who are not their friends.
However, only people who are already friends receive notification when they are added to the enemy list—the ones who were enemies to begin with remain oblivious to your wrath. But one would imagine time would perfect these shortfalls. In the meanwhile it’s time to enjoy some good old hating online!
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