I know people who have left Facebook, and others who are considering it, simply because of the ridiculous number of application requests they get. Every day my requests page is flooded with

• Kath wants you to be a vampire and fight off hobos and skeletons with the ninja turtles… sorry Kath, I live in the real world, and if I’m going to play a game, it will be a little more appealing than that.

• Jimmy wants to know how alike you are… If we were anything alike, you’d know that I f*cking hate these stupid application requests.

• Bob thinks you are sexy… Bob is a man. I am a man. This doesn’t work for me, no matter how sexy Bob thinks I am.

• Gemima wants to know what kind of lover are you…? If she really wanted be my lover, she would stop wasting my time having to block her Facebook requests and making mental notes to push her over next time I see her.

• If you add this application I will have anal sex with an Arabian orphan monkey and name my unborn child gumby… Well, I’d probably consider this one… only because Gumby rocks though!

I know I am not alone, my roommate has been saving his up for a few weeks and is at well over 400 application requests.

Any application request I get, I will automatically block. Why? Because if an application was really good, someone would tell me in person about it, or write on my wall about it, they would not spam me. That is what viral marketing is, not unsolicited, unwanted advertising in my face when I could think of nothing worse. The worst are those applications that don’t allow you to use them until you spam 20 friends.

This is the big Facebook fail as far as I am concerned – they are fabricating spam and alienating their users that are act over the age of 15. When the developer platform was released, the development community was excited, but the only people to benefit are those annoying people with too much time on their hands and that enjoy doing quizzes to see which pole dancing move is most likely to pick up the inbred transsexual they secretly desire.

Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed quite a few applications, especially Jetman during last exam period instead of studying, but none of the applications I have added have come from requests.

Facebook seem to slowly be warming to this theory with the “Ignore All Requests” and “Block Application” options now on the requests page, but it seems this is too little too late. Facebook needs to disable applications being able to spam users, plain and simple. Until they do that, I think their user base will begin to shrink.

As well as the annoying spam is going to a loser’s person’s profile and not being able to find their wall, photos or any other core Facebook features some people still use, because their page looks like a slightly more valid, but equally painful, Myspace page. The implementation of the extended profile was another fail by Facebook. As if any of these people of well below par maturity are going to remove these applications off their page themselves. The way for that to work is if all non core applications are automatically put there, and it is then a hassle to get an application back onto your front page.

Facebook started so promising, but day after day it is slipping into just another over stimulating piece of shit website that only 15 year olds will use.

Note: I am not leaving Facebook, but may consider it in the future.