“Emergent UI Features Team”
November 23, 2013 5:23 PM   Subscribe

 
As gratifying as it was to read a story about Facebook being overrun by zombies, it was a little disappointing that the rest of the world had to go with it.
posted by ardgedee at 5:40 PM on November 23, 2013


I am not even done with the story yet but am enjoying it immensely.
posted by rtha at 5:41 PM on November 23, 2013


I would have appreciated some more description of this fictional story-like composition. ; I very nearly didn't read it because I thought it was just a techy marketing spiel.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:10 PM on November 23, 2013


I was hoping for some "Griffin and Sabine"-esque elements, like embedded HTML code, or geolocation tags and screencaps of parking lot webcams. Paging Nick Bantock...
posted by Jake DeNiro at 6:40 PM on November 23, 2013


One of those one-in-a-thousand satirical pieces that has that magical just-so-close-to-the-truth quality to it. Does anyone doubt this is how it would go down?
posted by spitefulcrow at 7:23 PM on November 23, 2013


I am making this comment in order to indicate my enjoyment, because MetaFilter lacks a 'like' button.

Shut up. I use favorites as bookmarks for things I want to find later, ok?
posted by jacquilynne at 7:33 PM on November 23, 2013 [5 favorites]


I wonder how much of this was inspired by that reddit Day 1 Day 2, zombie apocalypse thing where people remarked that the most interesting thing was Infected or zombied people using social media to connect and contextualize their experiences?
posted by The Whelk at 8:48 PM on November 23, 2013


This is great-- reminds me of installing Linux on a dead badger and The Shambling Guide to New York City.

Rosenbaum has some great other stories out there; I know he's had a few on Podcastle.
posted by NoraReed at 9:43 PM on November 23, 2013


I liked it a lot, but I find the existence of zombies more believable than the absence of stigma.
posted by rtha at 9:57 PM on November 23, 2013


"As gratifying as it was to read a story about Facebook being overrun by zombies, it was a little disappointing that the rest of the world had to go with it."

SPOILERS

Not necessarily! The story implies that coders may have saved the world, or at least slowed down the apocalypse. As long as the Internet holds up, social media may help people know who and where the zombies are.

I liked this.
posted by Kevin Street at 11:03 PM on November 23, 2013


Brilliantly understated: "I was also told Zuck has a cold and is not reachable at this time."

I like how the normal zombie-movie dose of "don't open that door!" and "don't split up!" is transformed in this epistolary format of snapshots. It becomes less edge-of-my-seat horror-movie terror and more dark-comedy facepalm.
posted by daveliepmann at 12:35 AM on November 24, 2013


Can we use a different word? I’m not really all that comfortable with “zombie” from a disability rights perspective. It has really negative cultural connotations. It’s one thing if people with AER/CI want to reclaim that word, but I don’t think we should be doing it for them. How about “rager” or just “contracted AER/CI”?

Loved. This.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:30 AM on November 24, 2013


On the one hand this was fun. On the other, it combines zombies and facebook, two pop culture obsessions I don't have much use for.
posted by Dr Dracator at 4:41 AM on November 24, 2013


I think it's only about zombies and Facebook incidentally; it's more about how social media tries to respond to new trends IRL, and how people adopt social media tools within these trends. Using a pretty hyperbolic example.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:58 AM on November 24, 2013


Facebook is here, hundreds of millions of people use it, and they're going to use it to report, natter, speculate and riff on every current event that happens, whether it's a zombie plague or some guys bombing a marathon finish line in a part of the country most of them have never been to.

So the story is more of a commentary on the state of how-we-deal-with-the-world, present day, present technology. The zombies are a macguffin, really, and your personal hangups w/r/t Facebook don't enter into it because you're the minority in the greater demographic of people-wot-use-the-Internet-socially. (And I'm saying this as somebody who doesn't participate on Facebook either -- but I'm on Metafilter, and various other sites, for which there are more similarities than differences in terms of personal connections that get made and maintained.)
posted by ardgedee at 6:29 AM on November 24, 2013


> I am making this comment in order to indicate my enjoyment, because MetaFilter lacks a 'like' button.

Look for the [!] symbol at the end of the post, click and flag it as "Fantastic post".
posted by ardgedee at 6:32 AM on November 24, 2013


I just got bit AMA
posted by buriednexttoyou at 7:06 AM on November 24, 2013




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