Has Facebook jumped the shark?

I enjoy Facebook, but when someone started this whole 25 Random Things… stuff, I started to get a little iffy. I thought to myself, “Is Facebook starting to travel down that road?” and by that road, I am referring to a path of Xanga-centric self-promotion and tacky questionnaires that make people LOL and cause a whole onslaught of emoticon vomit.

I have started to notice a stream of other “all about me” notes on the popular social networking site. There’s one about one-word answers and another about your first-born (applicable only to mothers of course). I, like every other person, enjoy a nice questionnaire and survey now and then – but when they start to invade Facebook, it could possibly be the kiss of death.

This kind of chain letter malarkey puts a bad taste in my mouth. Sure, it’s just starting with one or two harmless questionnaires. But before we know it, there will be a new quiz or quirky Q&A that will pop up every single hour on Facebook. It will become the equivalent of a Superpoke or any other annoying application that your friends try to send your way (sorry FB friends, no offense – but I just can’t stand it when someone wants me to add a “Pass a Drink” or “Green Patch” app).

In any matter, I just choose to ignore all those applications and once the tidal wave of questionnaires start, I’ll ignore them too. I just hope that all of this won’t make me ignore Facebook. I mean, I actually like the site. I mainly use it to promote all my blogs and post embarrassing pictures of friends and family. But I just don’t want it to explode with mind-numbing surveys and then dissolve into a virtual social networking ghost town – like Myspace (do people still use that site?)

And can you believe after all that ranting, I actually did fill out that “25 Random Things” note. Here it is for all of you who didn’t catch it. Enjoy:

1.) I was once a hustler and pimp in Memphis, but then eventually rose above to follow my dream as a rapper.
2.) It is my dream to move to Chicago because that’s where they film DTV.
3.) I was once assigned detention with four other people and believe it or not, I became lifelong friends with the unlikely bunch. There was a princess, a criminal, a basket case, a jock -and me, the geek. I learned a lot about myself that day.
4.) There was this one time I started this underground club where we would beat the shit out of each other. Turns out, I was just fighting with my other personality.
5.) I once worked at this boarding school place where we had this store called “Over Our Heads” and we also took in this Australian vagabond named Pippa. She was hot.
6.) I was once at this resort in the Catskills and I carried a watermelon. Someone also put me in the corner after Johnny specifically told them not to.
7.) I once found a map of a buried treasure in the attic of my old house in Astoria and my friends and I went on an adventure whilst being chased by a trio of criminals called the Fratellis.
8.) One time, my brothers and sisters had a contest where we built a house of cards to see who would get the remaining checkered trading stamps. Tiger, our dog, knocked down the cards during our turn and we lost the contest because we had a rule where “anything goes.” It was the most depressing day of my life.
9.) My mom hooked up with this guy from outer space (at the time, she didn’t know this) and they made me. As a result, I can freeze time by putting my fingers together. But I still talk with my dad through this glass cube once in a while.
10.) One time, Tommy Page sang at my birthday party. I thought he was in love with me and so did my sister, but it turns out he was just being nice.
11.) I age backwards.
12.) I once had a governess that not only taught me how to sing in play clothes out of curtains, but also taught me about the value of family.
13.) I once lived with a retired football star and this woman with a lesbionic haircut. I called her Ma’am.
14.) I was a member the Mickey Mouse Club teen pop group sensation called “The Party.”
15.) I wrote the theme song to “Doogie Howser, M.D.”
16.) As an overweight teen, I, with the help from my friends, stopped dancing segregation in Baltimore in the late ’50s.
17.) My friend Bill and I once met this guy named Rufus with a time traveling phone booth. His timing couldn’t be any better because we needed to do a history report and make an A or else I would’ve been sent to military school. As a result, we picked up a bunch of historical figures through our adventure through time and ended up getting an A.
18.) When I was living in New York during the 1979, my gang and I had to make it back to our home turf in Coney Island. To make it there, we had to fight a bunch of other gangs. It was a struggle to stay alive. More importantly, it was a test of our brotherhood.
19.) In the ’80s I lived in inner-city L.A. with no future – until Mr. Escalante taught me AP Calculus and changed my life forever.
20.) I once followed a guy I had a crush all the way to New York for college because at our high school graduation in Palo Alto, he wrote a touching note to me in my yearbook. I confessed my love for him and it was awkward, but we remained friends. Despite my crazy roommate with a mysterious box, those were the best four years of my life.
21.) When I was in Catholic school, a successful headlining act in Las Vegas posed as a nun and our music teacher. I was a thug, but she brought out my ability to sing, along with my other classmates.
22.) As an injured hockey player, I was once partnered with this snotty figure skater to become the next big thing in pairs figure skating. I hated her at first, but we eventually fell in love and created a new move called the Pemchenko Twist.
23.) When I was a greaser, my friend Johnny and I got into some trouble with the law. I had to hideout in an abandoned school house in the countryside where I dyed my hair blonde and I read passages from “Gone with the Wind” to kill time. One day, the house caught on fire with a touring group of children. We rescued them and went back to town as heroes. Later that week we had a rumble with the Socs and we kicked ass. That was the greatest day of my life.
24.) I was really into Swing music during Nazi Germany, but my best friend and I, after stealing a radio from a bakery, had to join the Nazi army as punishment, therefore testing our friendship. But I never let go of my love for swing music. Swing heil!
25.) With my blue-gray eyes, I was easily the most popular Geisha in Japan. But that did not bode well with my rival, Hatsumomo. Even so, I learned a lot about myself during those years and I still retain all the class and mannerisms of a Geisha to this day.