Social networking sites are literally everywhere. In your bookmarks, set as your home page, on your phone, in your thoughts, emblazoned 'pon your retinas. There is no escape. Therefore, we succumb. And the worst part is, we enjoy it. Like beaten wives (Wooding. 2008) we return every two hours, trembling and tearful, in hope of the little red flag in the bottom right of our screens. This, I feel, is common knowledge. Even those stuck in 2004 still using MySpace, or worse the 40 million worldwide who somehow got lost on their way to present, and are still using Bebo are dictated by this monotonous and oppressive regime we call the social network. But why? It is because we are scared.
Scared of what, you ask? I shall explain. 
Social Networking sites have become a substitute for reality. The history of history sees an historical shift; one from speaking to writing. As society develops, so limits of it's communication increase, for example, before the advent of letters you'd either walk fifteen miles to your neighbours house to borrow some sugar or shout at the top of your voice that you needed some sugar, and hope that he would hear. (Coincidentally it seems that before writing no one thought of going to the shop and buying some, but that is besides the point.) But with writing we could send a letter, wait 2-5 days for delivery depending on how much you can afford to spend on stamps and wait for a reply depending on the same factors and eventually get your sugar. But with the internet and social networking sites, an international forum has developed, meaning you can ask anyone around the world at any time if you can borrow some sugar (though I doubt UrBaN_PrInCeSs.bebo.com is going to oblige).
Leaving sugar aside for a moment, we can proceed to our main objective. We can track throughout history a gradual decline of the direct social situation, from storytelling to written documentation to the internet, a sense of reality of communication has been lost, leaving us scared of the reality of close word combat. To extend this analogy, we have gone from fighting with sticks, to fighting with red buttons with plastic safeguards in big white rooms full of computers that actually do nothing at all; and it is for this that Social Networking sites are to blame.
An example; status updates. The expression of one's inner subjective notions is no longer a verbal or physical explosion (screaming at someone, or kicking them for example), but is now a 140 character passive aggressive 'news feed' entry that some people will read but no one will care about.
A second example; the poke. Without doubt the third most annoying attribute of Facebook (behind of course invites to Ninja vs. Pirate games or Rate Me applications), the poke is just another way of saying; “I'm too scared to talk to you but I'm happy to engage in metaphorical sex with you”.
Facebook's powers, however, do not stop there. We turn our attention to the name analyser. An acrostication of the forename into a set of random characteristics which have no intended relation to the true nature of the signified, the name analyser is forcing away from progression as regards fluidity of character and personality. Moving us back one hundred years, this application undercuts post-Victorian social anthropology promoting the taxonomisation and projection of false culture upon the colonies that we so endorsed in the late nineteenth century. Taking this further, then, we can conclude that by projecting its values upon us, the name analyser not only categorises us inaccurately, but creates a power hierarchy; with Facebook at the top (the colonisers) and us at the bottom (the colonised).
To conclude. Firstly, congratulations for managing to get through this insanely boring and contrived article that probably has brought nothing to your life but a slight sense of satisfaction that you are not its author. However I do hope this article has opened your eyes to the powers of social networking sites, as they alter and control our society in terms of language, social structure and sillyness.
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