Facebook - A Social Experiment Gone Wrong!

I have had Facebook for many years now.  It started as a way of keeping in touch with people.  It seemed like a nice idea.  See how people I went to school with we're getting on, catch up with family and friends overseas.

Then it grew, it snowballed, Facebook took on a life of its own.  Now we have 'likes', 'groups', games and various assorted apps.  I came to realise, through a conversation with one of my friends, that it hated it.  I only really keep it for event organizing purposes.  I started looking at why my dislike had formed and grown.

It started with all the stupid crap I have to trawl through just to see a couple of status'.  How many times can I see a grumpy cat in the same photo, with some 'witty' writing above and below it?  How often will I see what used to be called 'chain letters', and then spam? "If you share this lucky dog turd with 10 of your friends your luck will change for 2 months, 4 days, 3 hours, 47 minutes!"  Yes some of you friends will think you are an idiot and hide all your updates, probably forever!  "Share this if you hate...insert terrible thing here!"  Homophobia, cancer, AIDS, animal cruelty, child abuse!  Who doesn't hate these things? No I'm not sharing your stupid whining about very basic issues.  Why don't they ever say, "if you don't hate cancer, why don't you just piss off!"  "Share this if you think soldiers should get paid more than footballers" maybe if the government wasn't run on our tax money they would, but then that would be a private army and they would be mercenaries, and not heroes.  Private individuals pay footballers to do a job in their team.  No one suggests Richard Branson and Alan Sugar are over paid, no one seems to have an issue of Hollywood throwing millions of dollars at making some movies for Will Smith and Tom Cruise to entertain us for 2 hours, so why always footballers?

Then there is the selfies, what the hell made this a cool phenomenon?  Badly taken pictures, usually of some girl making a face like a duck.  You're not sexy, you look like a duck!  If male ducks had Facebook they would probably be permanently hard, "Ooh, Daisy got boobs!"  But they don't, get over it, take some decent photos or maybe look normal and not like an idiot!

A few of my friends are very creative.  They share things they have done on Facebook with their 'friends'.  This will usually get five or six likes, maybe a comment or two.  This is something they have taken time and effort to do, maybe draw a picture, create a video, make a collection of amusing pictures or create a music track.  Why is there so little appreciation for effort that someone has put in, when a girl can make the mating face of a mallard and get 200 likes?

When did moaning about everyday life stop being a private thing?  What happened to personal issues?  People just seem to go on Facebook and constantly moan about the most menial things.  It's just a constant stream of, my car, my kids, my husband, my wife, my house, no money, no time, blah blah blah.  You have a roof over your head, food on the table, maybe if you spent less time on Facebook moaning and more time with you family your wife, husband, kids wouldn't be so annoying!  There are people dying of terrible incurable diseases, starving because they can't afford food, that don't have a roof over their heads, that have no basic clean water, think about them before you moan you self centred ignorant muppets!

My final Facebook issues come with my 'friends' list.  I genuinely have nothing against any of the people on my 'friends' list, I wish them all good health and a good life.  But how the hell have I got 180 friends?  I consider myself lucky to have about 10 close friends, with about 25/30 other friends.  Add to that about another 10/15 family members.  Where the hell are the other 135 people from?  This is mostly a list of people I have briefly met at some point, either worked with, or just met through someone else.  It's no wonder my news feed is clogged full of crap!

I won't get rid of Facebook as yet, it is a tool of modern society, yet I find more of my life is wasted looking at pointless rubbish that doesn't even really interest me.  I hope people understand my rant and don't take it personally, it is a generalisation and somewhat exaggerated, but if you do take offence, I'm sure you will post about it in some heartbroken update which I will, no doubt, just ignore while chuckling at stupid cat pictures.

Marvel Vs DC, Movies and TV?

Marvel and DC have done battle for many years, even on the silver screen.  Until recently the history is somewhat chequered.  

The first foray into film and TV was by DC. In 1951 Superman and the Mole Men was released in the cinema.  This was a pilot for an Adventures of Superman TV series.  Marvel's first efforts were on TV in 1977 with The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man TV series'.

But it wasn't until as recently as 2008 did either of them start work on a cohesive Cinematic Universe.  While DC were basking in the success of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, second of the Nolan Batman trilogy, Marvel sowed the seeds of a larger universe of movies with Iron Man.  A small clip, post credits hinted much, much more was to come.  

Unfortunately Marvel sold off the rights to many properties such as Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and DaredevIl, although the rights to Daredevil have recently reverted back.  However this has meant that Marvel have been able to concentrate on a core number of characters.  Focussing initially on the Avengers 'big three', Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, Marvel have weaved a story and joined them into one universe. 

Now the ground work has been laid and the first phase is complete, the universe can start opening up to other characters, including the Cosmic Universe, with Guardians of the Galaxy.  They also have Agents of Shield, which although has a weak beginning, is intertwined into the universe. Plus the Netflix exclusive series of Daredevil through to Defenders on the way.

Personally I can only see an agreement with Fox and Sony working with Marvel being of benefit to them.  But this would take a lot of work, but I can see it happening.

So Marvel seem to have set their stall out, and are working hard to keep things together.  Now for DC. 

They seem to be struggling.  After coming out of two excellent Batman movies, they gave us something new, Green Lantern.  Rumoured to be the beginning of a DC Cinematic Universe, it stank, and it flopped. The DCCU stalled. 

While Dark Knight Rises concluded the Nolan trilogy, work started on Man of Steel, a Superman reboot.  Again rumour suggested that maybe they could right the wrongs of Green Lantern, and launch a Cinematic Universe, which Marvel was already launching the second phase of.  

Man of Steel hit, and although I felt it had many problems, it hit big.  A sequel was announced and it was one of the DC movies people wanted, Superman/Batman.  Arrow was launched, focussing on another member of the DC universe, Green Arrow.  Its first season gave a good account of itself.  Introducing several DCU characters, including Black Canary and Deathstroke, it moved on to a second season and introduced The Flash, another of the DCU big hitters, ready for his own series to be launched later this year.

Casting for Superman/Batman has already announced Wonder Woman as a character.  If the two series can keep going, a Justice League movie can only be a couple more years after.  However, they are very reliant on several things for this to happen.  Both series need to keep going, and possibly introduce a rebooted Green Lantern for his own series.  Also Superman/Batman has to be good...very good!  Because fanboys are already hammering the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.  Both are apparently lined up for three movies each. 

I'm not going to judge until I see it, but after Man of Steel I don't hold much hope.  It's like Warner don't really get the characters they own.  They keep trying to ground them in reality, an alien who can fly, and Amazonian Princess, an alien power ring, a man who can run at the speed of sound.  They have a fear of going all out on the fantasy aspect of the fantasy characters.  This is the same studio who bought us 8 movies about a magic school and evil wizards trying to kill a boy!  Why do they keep getting stuck?

Their screenwriters just don't seem to get to grips with it.  Maybe they feel comic books are below them? David S. Goyer has written or cowritten many comic book movies now, and yet he is still very hit and miss.  Blade, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are great, Dark Knight Rises, Man Of Steel and Blade Trinity, not so much.  Maybe it is time to give someone else a go, although I admit it didn't work on Green Lantern.  Personally I think they should hand over control to the writers of the comic books.  Comic books that have lasted for 50/60/70 years, and then let the directors put it on the screen.  

I seem to bitch a lot about DC/Warner, but I'm not a hater. I have loved load of the comic books, many of them are among my favourites.  They just keep getting the movies wrong, and at a time when comic book movies are doing so well, it seems a shame not to get a great bunch of DC movies too.

D.C. Events, A Crisis of Infinite Characters! - Spoilers

So I decided that it was about time that I read Crisis on Infinite Earths.  I'm not sure how I have never got around to reading this before.

First, a little bit of history...

Crisis on Infinite Earths was written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Perez.  The 12 part maxi-series was designed to simplify 50 years of Multiverses, alternate Earth characters, and crossovers.  It did do exactly that, the post-Crisis DC was a much simpler place for many years.  This was the first major crossover event for D.C., and the second released after Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, although it was developed before hand and D.C. delayed the release to get it right.

I will admit I came into this with quite high expectations.  This was THE Event.  Between this and Secret Wars for Marvel, these launched the event driven comic world we now live in.

Unfortunately I found this story to be boring.  A lot of it didn't make any sense, the art work was cluttered and messy, the story over-complicated. Very basically, the D.C. universe was split many years ago into the Multiverse, and an antimatter version of it did the same.  Both matter and antimatter universes had a character called Monitor.  Antimatter Monitor worked out that if he destroyed the matter universe, he would get stronger. Matter Monitor works this out and tries to stop him by calling together many heroes from various universes in the Multiverse, with specific powers.  Are you bored yet? Exactly! Personally it comes across like a self indulgent mess.

The stem of the problem comes from the idea to include all the characters up to this point in D.C.'s history.  This just leaves panels too full, and characters with not a lot to do except look at each other, and say "Oh no, what can we do?"

What the story does do right is handle some of the deaths well.  As, I believe, the first time for major character deaths, they have genuine meaning and impact.  It does also resolve the Multiverse problem of too many intertwined universes and alternate characters.  However Sadly this isn't enough for me to enjoy this "classic" story.  I found it overly hard to read and not very satisfying to conclude.

Next up is Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.  This is practically the same story as Crisis on Infinite Earths, with time being eliminated instead of the Multiverse.  For me the story works a lot better than the original Crisis by being smaller, only 5 parts.  It is still confusing, and tries to include too many characters, but the time travel aspect of the story works a lot better for me.  Overall a better read than Crisis on Infinite Earths, but still not great.

Next will be Infinite Crisis.