I have somehow managed to lock myself out of my Facebook account.
This, my friends, is a travesity. Plain and simple.
What's more, if current "friends" look for me on their FB friend list, I'm simply not there. In fact, I don't turn up on a general FB search at all. I've been erased. Deleted. Wiped. Eradicated. Expunged. Purged.
You get the picture.
So don't do what I did, which was start a FB account for The Diva purely for the purpose of her playing that infernal "Pet Society" game. However, I opened her account under my email address (albeit with a different password).
Bad idea.
FB just assumed, I suppose, that we were one in the same, because when I tried to get to MY account after getting her set up, I got the dreaded email-and-password-combo-doesn't-exist error. I was able to get to HER account with no incident. Even after I went back in and belatedly gave her account a different email, I was still shunned by my own account and therefore FB. By the way, no warning from FB such as "Stop, you idiot! That email is already being used!" If, indeed, this is how they prevent the same user from having different profiles, or how they prevent profile fraud, they need to make this known somewhere other than the fine print that nobody except (bored) attornies read.
Say you: What, self-proclaimed social worker blogger, does this have to do with social work?
Say Me: Nothing.
So, for all of you who know me on Facebook, I'm trying to re-exist there. I have an email into their "help center" (no phone help available, not even from a call center in India) and God knows how long it will take to rectify. Initial Google searches indicate FB's customer service is just plain awful, so it could be days or (gasp) weeks before I can access it again. Honestly, if it's too long, I'm just starting from scratch, loathe as I am to do so.
On another note, death to Webkinz (and I'm not linking to them for a reason).
Say you: Wha???
Say me: It's all connected. Bear with me.
My parents and a few friends have heard my vocal diatribe on this company recently, but I'm still outraged. If you haven't heard of the Webkinz phenonmenon, you're quite lucky. Those of us who have progeny that fall into the targeted demographic of impressionable school aged children, however, aren't so fortunate.
They are these stupid stuffed animals that one either a) buys or, more likely b) has said animal thrust upon them by well-meaning-yet-ignorant parents via children at birthday parties. There's this whole web-world that your new "adopted pet" can then inhabit online, once you register your animal (read: cheap stuffed polyester toy made in China). Little Webkinz unicorn or monkey or dolphin or whatever can then have her own house! And furniture! And garden! And they make friends and can get educated at the "school" and then get jobs to earn coins to buy more stuff.
Sound familiar?
At any rate, what is not made clear at the onset, and what The Diva and I discovered last week, is that once you register your pet (there's a code that comes attached to it) that pet is only good for a year. The website then tells your child (read: you) that her pet is expired and she has to "adopt" another one. Meaning your child (read: you) must go out an buy another damned animal in order to have continued access to the website.
And this is where the Facebook fiasco comes in. Because I simply refused to buy another one on all kinds of grounds, not the least of which it irritates me beyond belief that that damned company so blatantly promotes consumerism and acquistion to such young children. At least on FB, The Diva could play Pet Society, which is essentially the same game, for free.
Well, not for free. Since it apparently cost me my account.
I digress.
Ok, I'm done. ->
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tXCM/~3/mEtuI6d8oY4/crisis-consumer-moans-psa.html
Posted
28 Jul 2009 7:15 PM
by
Trench Warfare
| Report Abuse