Within the last several days I received the following FaceBook Super Wall posting from a number of my adult FaceBook friends. This is only one of the many hoaxes that I have received in the past few months. But I think this is the one that annoys me the most. Have a read and see what you think.
Sic
Attention all Facebook membeRs. Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated, There have been many members complaining that Facebook is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is that there are too many non-active Facebook members And on the other side too many new Facebook members. We will be sending this messages around to see if the Members are active or not,If you’re active please send to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks, The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space, If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send this message to show me that your active and not deleted.
Founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg
I got a little miffed at the people who forwarded this on to me without even a cursory attempt to think about the message itself. So, I posted the following on the FaceBook page of all those who sent the original posting to me.
Hey *******,
Got your message re: FaceBook overpopulation.
Do you really believe this kind of nonsense? It’s nothing more than another FaceBook hoax.
It reads as if a child wrote it, or at the very least, it was written by a person who is barely literate.
FaceBook is a virtual community hosted on computer servers, not a real world where people take up real space. You can’t “overpopulate” a network of servers. To accommodate growth you simply add more servers to the network; something FaceBook does continuously.
The downside of this type of hoax is the server time it takes up by being forwarded to other FaceBook users. The morons who write these things must get a real laugh when they see the huge number of postings.
We continuously hear and read that we, in North America, are computer literate. Nothing could be further from the truth. The credence that people give to a hoax such as this, goes a long way to proving that point.
Functional illiteracy severely limits interaction with information and communication technologies (e.g. using a personal computer working with a word processor, a web browser, a spreadsheet application, or using a mobile phone efficiently).
The American Council of Life Insurers reported that 75% of the Fortune 500 companies provide some level of remedial training for their workers. In the United States 40-44 million (28-30% of adults) are functionally illiterate.
It’s not uncommon that first year college students are required to take a course in remedial reading. How’s that for literacy; is it any wonder that these types of hoaxes get spread so quickly!
There, I feel better after that little rant.
This is a pretty funny comment made in response to all those inane “forward messages”. I received this from a friend on my FaceBook page. It says it all!
Hello, my name is Martin and I suffer from the guilt of not
forwarding 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people
who actually believe that if you send them on, a poor 6-year-old
girl in Tumbarumba with a breast on her forehead will be able to
raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents
sell her to a traveling freak show.
Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you, and
everyone to whom you send “his” email, $1000?
How stupid are we?
Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I’ll
get laid by a model I just happen to run into the next day!
What a bunch of bullshit.
Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and
sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing a chain letter that was
started by Saint Peter in 5 AD and brought to this country by midget
pilgrims on the Endeavor.
Fuck ’em.
If you’re going to forward something, at least send me something
mildly amusing. I’ve seen all the “send this to 10 of your closest
friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will
somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being”.
I don’t fucking care.
Show a little intelligence and think about what you’re actually
contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are it’s
our own unpopularity.
The point being? If you get some chain letter that’s threatening to
leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete
it.
If it’s funny, send it on. Don’t piss people off by making them
feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been
tied to the ass of a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only
salvation is the 5 cents per letter he’ll receive if you forward
this email.
Now forward this to everyone you know.
Otherwise, tomorrow morning your underwear will turn carnivorous
and will consume your genitals.
Have a nice day.
Bill Mullins' Weblog - Tech Thoughts 
Yeah, I’ve been watching that, and several other Fb chain-mail type things. There does seem to be a “literacy” problem here, but not like we’d expect. It’s as if people don’t know how to write to one another, so they forward these ready-made posts instead. (Imagine getting a letter from a friend, and opening the envelop only to find a page from a magazine or newspaper inside, with no other content.)
I use various web tools (email, blogs, etc) with adult learners in my literacy work, but I avoid Fb because it – like nothing else I’ve seen – somehow manages to generate loads of contact at the expense of actual communication.
I like your obsevation that FaceBook actually restricts communication. Good luck in your literacy work. It is a noble cause.
Bill Mullins