Like If You Like This

While cruising around the whacky world of Facebook not long ago, one of the advertisements on the sidebar caught my eye. Usually I can ignore the Facebook sidebar; I can ignore anything.

At work I’m famous for putting Post-It notes on my monitor so as not to forget something important; and then having the ability to work behind the very same Post-It note, ignoring its supposedly intrusive presence on my screen. I’ve been ignoring Twitter since it first came out.

I can ignore like a champion.

But back to the point, the ads on the Facebook bar have caught my attention once or twice; one notable one was advertising a Canadian law firm which will help you get pardoned for various crimes, and the mug shot they were sporting was none other than Stone Cold Steve Austin.

At the time I was fairly certain they had not sought his permission, which led to a lovely little day dream of the lawyers at Canadian Pardons. Com needing their own services.

But I digress.

The particular advertisement which drew my attention was one of those lovely suggestions that Facebook likes to throw at you, in the hopes of helping you to sink even more of your free time into the maelstrom.

Facebook, it turns out, wanted to alert me that 32,325 people liked Cthulhu.

Now perhaps it’s just me, and as I’m fairly unique in many respects or so I’m told, so this is entirely possible, but I’m of the opinion that nobody should really like Cthulhu.

Best case scenario, Cthulhu is a near god-like entity, who if not hell bent on the destruction of mankind at least considers us nothing more than toe jam between his celestial toes... or tentacles... tentacle jam? Worst case scenario... well actually I can’t really think of anything worse than being tentacle jam.

I’m not really unclear about Cthulhu’s motives in all of this; after all, celestial entities being what they are they all want one of two things: a) destroy the world or b) conquer the world.

What I am unclear about is the motives of Facebook.

Now this really shouldn’t surprise anyone of course, Facebook bearing a striking resemblance to evil celestial entities wanting one of two things... frankly, at the time, Facebook’s motives were as unclear as the reasoning behind the valuation of its IPO. That’s right, I went there.

Was Facebook trying to warn me?

At first glance this didn’t seem right. Warning me of an impending invasion of Cthulhu and His Minions (doesn’t that sound like a  band you’d find backing up a late-night TV talk show host... like Craig Ferguson?) would be entirely too helpful for Facebook. Facebook is all about making sweeping radical changes without any sort of forewarning whatsoever.

Warning me of an impending invasion by Cthulhu, a catastrophic event which could shatter the timeline would be out of character with Facebook, whose introduction of its own “timeline” was almost catastrophic in its own right.

More likely, Facebook has analyzed my previous blog entries and come to the mathematical conclusion I’m a wee bit of an ass; and what do asses like to do? Why take over the world!

So with that in mind, Facebook, extrapolating from its previous conclusion, figured if I was an ass, then I would not be opposed to a major shift in the world’s governmental strategies; and it’s only a short step from not objecting to evil to helping it along. So perhaps, thought Facebook, there was a chance that if I like Cthulhu too I could join with my evil deity loving brethren and ... um... sistren in the complete domination of mankind.

And besides, I’m sure Facebook thought, if it didn’t work out all that well for me and I failed in my bid to aid my celestial overlord in his attempt to dominate and subjugate the inhabitants of my own world, the fine people of Canadian Pardons.com could get me off the hook; because if they’re good enough for Stone Cold, they’re good enough for me.

Well Facebook, I do not like Cthulhu. I do not go for evil entities with tentacles. No tentacle jam me. If I’m going to support any evil overlord, it will be Scorpius thank you very much.