elfs | Wow, just... wow. The stupid, it depresses me

Oh. My. God.

Being a responsible geek constantly updating myself with the latest and greatest, I read a number of blogs and outlets, and while most of what I read is interesting eyecandy I also track back-end development stuff. IndieFlix is thinking about implement some third-party login features, and last week ReadWriteWeb had a good article entitle "Facebook Wants to be Your One True Login."

Being a good article, I bookmarked it on del.icio.us. So did a lot of other developers. Many developers also commented on it in their blogs. The article rapidly floated to the top of Google's index for the phrase "Facebook login."

And then, for many facebook users, the world ended. Here are some of the comments attached to ReadWriteWeb's article:

All I wanted to do was LOG IN TO MY FACE BOOK ACCOUNT! I don't like this new way! "If it an't broke why fix it?"
now that you have managed to mess up the whole system how do i get back to login?
Nothing like being taken hostage on our own computer :-(
Why wont you let me sign in?
i liked the old way better what advantages do we have with the new way takes to long to sign in fix it back

There were hundreds of these. In some sense, it's funny, but in another: these are the people who use the software I write, and they're all too stupid to know the difference between Facebook, Google, the Internet, and their own goddamn browser software.

No wonder phishing survives.

Seriously, follow the link to the article and read the comments. You'll be laughing your ass off, and then you'll realize that these people work in office buildings, process your insurance paperwork, take your orders at restaurants, and sometimes handle nuclear weapons. So sad. After about page 5 or so, RWW's big banner warning worked for most people and the stupid stopped, but... gah. 200 or more "Where's my Facebook?" complaints.

Man, I'm terrified I might have to share a polis with these people some year.