
When did Facebook become so uncool? - jamesbritt
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-04-10/tech/tech_social-media_facebook-uncool-instagram_1_mark-zuckerberg-facebook-social-network?_s=PM:TECH
======
yoasif_
>Maybe it was when CEO Zuckerberg started to seem less like that geeky,
counterculture college kid and more like a run-of-the-mill billionaire.

What? Zuckerberg never seemed "counter-cultural".

Also, and maybe I'm crazy, but Facebook was _never_ cool -- it was always
"just" useful. It was a way to learn about people in college and get back to
them after you met them at a party. Facebook was a social utility.

It was also better than MySpace, and had more users on it than Friendster.
Does that make it cool? Nah, it just makes it better.

I think that the idea that it may have at some point become cool is among...
high school kids who couldn't get in, because it was only open to colleges.
Later, it became cool to moms and dads because "it's that internet thing and I
can see pictures of people I know, cool!".

For everyone else, who were familiar with email and Flickr and hell, even
blogs, all that is just noise.

Facebook was never cool -- and if it was, it was cool among the uncool.

~~~
herval
It was so cool people even made a movie about it. Zuckerberg is/was the
poster-child of the counter-culture: one in which the nerds beat the jocks
(literally). Not that he was the _first_ nerd to "win", but still, the image
he cultivated (the hooded ceo with the "I'm ceo bitch" business card) is
undeniably associated to "counter-culture" and "cool"...

~~~
yoasif_
Steve Jobs alone is more of a counter culture figure, with the ashram in
India, and the drug use, and the whole garage story.

Zuckerberg was a kid from freakin' _Harvard_ and Phillips Exeter. I think the
Harvard thing alone disqualifies him from being a counter cultural figure,
especially since he has always seemed squeaky clean and fairly intelligent.

As far as the nerds "winning" -- I thought that was the way of the world.
Napoleon wasn't some giant, neither was Bill Gates. The idea that the jock's
best years are in high school is a pretty well-known trope at this point,
often used to comedic effect in movies like Revenge of the Nerds -- or TV
shows like Married with Children.

Well-off kids doing well for themselves is hardly unusual or counter cultural
-- it's more like that's what we would _expect_ with the advantages afforded
to them.

~~~
tyrmored
Your college does not dictate your eventual status as a "square" or
counterculture icon. Timothy Leary, whom Nixon described as the most dangerous
man in America due to his immense countercultural influence, was a Harvard
lecturer. Ted Kaczynski (better known as the Unabomber) was accepted there at
age 16 for his undergraduate degree, later became an assistant professor at
Berkeley, and has inspired a whole generation of ecoterrorists and neo-
luddites. And what about all the free software/open source advocates that came
out of buttoned-down tech schools like MIT, including Richard Stallman?

~~~
yoasif_
Yep. But all those guys were clearly counter culture figures: drugs,
terrorism, open source (that last one is so different and hard to categorize
that I just called it what we know it as).

Zuckerberg? Where's his support of Occupy Wall Street, or the Tea Party, or
even marijuana legalization?

Facebook doesn't even allow pictures of breastfeeding mothers!

[http://abcnews.go.com/Health/breastfeeding-advocates-hold-
fa...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/breastfeeding-advocates-hold-facebook-
protest/story?id=15530012#.T4gP7qVetfw)

I know that you were providing examples where the college someone went to
doesn't preclude them from being counter cultural. Zuckerberg, though, while
not "square" exactly, is basically what our culture basically expects of
people that go to those schools.

Leary and Kaczynski, not so much, and that may actually be a part of the
reason that that they grew to have outsize influence as counter cultural
icons!

------
jshintaku
I'll take a stab at it and throw my 0.2 in I have had Facebook since 2004.
Facebook became uncool when it opened up the site to people who weren't in
your same college. Once everyone from Myspace and Friendster joined Facebook
it became uncool. Then once people's parents and relatives joined it became
seriously uncool. The lack of control over your data and pac-man like gobbling
up of other companies is just the icing on the uncool cake.

------
Badkangar00
When my mom started using it.

------
justncase80
Who cares about cool? Who actually uses this site and is simultaneously cool?
No one. I just want to send event invites to my friends and have political
debates.

------
molecule
2004

