Thursday, August 17, 2023

Facebook cartoons are the worst cartoons



Even though I know it always makes me sound like a right tosser, but I can't stop myself from scoffing  at futurist articles and books that are all about how the algorithm will rule our lives. Because, man, Facebook's algorithm has had me as a captive audience for 15 years now, and it doesn't know me at all.

It's getting progressively worse, and if there is any kind of AI behind these decisions, it's dumb as shit and getting dumber. I have no interest in car repairs or home DIY, but that's what it keeps suggesting to me. I vigorously block all the joke Star Wars pages that are still bitching about Rey, but they're like cockroaches and keep coming back. 

And I might have reached my breaking point over the friggin' cartoons. Maybe it's because I belong to a couple of comic book groups, but my Facebook timeline is inundated with tonnes and tonnes of "recommended" cartoons

And they're all, without exception, absolutely fucking terrible. If they're lucky, they're just clumsy and dull, telling ancient jokes with terribly bland art. But a lot of them are the kind of sexist, racist garbage that was last acceptable in 1955.

All with the most generic of cartooning, with no style or substance, thin-lined and static. Some of them have even started latching onto names that are slight variations of the great Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons, which are still eternally funny, and certainly better than the crap in my newsfeed.

I take my cartoons seriously and I weep that the carefully curated funny pages of the past have now morphed into this ocean of shit, with endless mother-in-law jokes and desert island gags that would have been laughed out of the Mad Magazine offices (and not in a good way).

The quality control on these things is dire/non existent, and these cheap attempts at laffs are actively making the world a worse place.

Facebook shambles on, and I'll still check in once a week, just to find out which of my cousins has become a grandparent (they have 'em young in my fam), but for a site that it all about the user experience, it's giving me nothing else worth chasing.

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