Tag Archives: The Hangover 2

What Happens in Vegas Stays on Facebook

The genius hit piece that was The Social Network left out one particular offense Americans will hold against Mark Zuckerberg for years to come: he has destroyed the concept of Las Vegas.

The Sin City that we feared, loathed and lusted after is but a distant memory. Vegas spent upwards of $100 million promoting its “Stays Here” ad campaign since 2003 in an initially successful effort to boost travel. Who could have guessed a Harvard computer genius would invent the slogan’s refutation the very next year? Now, even the worst of chumps, the one who believes he can beat the house and walk away 21-style, has to know that he’s bringing his trip home with him–that is, if the locks are still the same when he deplanes.

Facebook 3:16 For Zuckerberg so hated the world, that he gave your wife the newsfeed

Gone are the days when Vegas conventioneers could get black-out drunk, drugged and married in the same 30-second spot and return home to a blissfully ignorant family. Mark Zuckerberg’s newsfeed precludes such luck.

The origins of the newsfeed can be pinpointed to the day Facebook planted a reminder box of upcoming birthdays onto the front page. It was a miracle. Before Facebook came along, the only way to remember someone’s birthday was to attend his funeral. But you don’t get any credit for reading dates off etched marble and you’d look a little silly showing up to his house the following year with balloons and a cake. Getting birthdays on the newsfeed was a good thing, but there is a difference between this nugget of virtue and what we are seeing today, namely the source. A user enters her birthday onto the web site, in the hopes that people will pretend to remember it before her wake. If said user is a crazy girlfriend, who loads a red herring date to test you out, you curse her treachery, not that of Facebook.

Her birthday is not October 27

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