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

[elfs]

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.

Comments

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

ZOMG! I sort of bounced around the comments.

#958 gives his user name and password.

[reynai.livejournal.com]

Sadder still is the thought that the ones who posted comments are the ones who 1) bothered to figure out how and 2) could figure out how. Who knows how many others were stymied by the fact that the comment thing was down at the bottom, or just went 'forget it, this is too confusing'?

And somewhere is there is someone who managed to find the real Facebook login, but was confused, likely because he is using a low resolution, and apparently there is a big left-justified graphic, pushing the actual login area far to the right... and he didn't know how to scroll. Which is also bad design on Facebook's part, potentially, if they're wanting to allow people who use smaller resolutions to use the site. /ramble.

[neoteny.livejournal.com]

My charitable hope is that it's some sort of troll, but on reflection that doesn't make me feel much better.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

OMG. And this is even with IE8's policy of highlighting the domain... (you know they aren't using Firefox, unless IT set it up for them...)

Da hell.

I'm so sorry, Elf. On the one hand, near-ubiquitous Internet-ability may be the only thing that saves us... but I do not envy you having to deal with Joe Sixpack and his busted cupholder...

The mind, it boggles.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Commentary:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/100004656/facebook-login-cancel-google-and-the-perfect-storm-of-idiots/

[gromm.livejournal.com]

You've never done tech support, eh? :)

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

At the same time though, changing around software so it is LESS easy to use simply to say "Hey, we made changes!" is a bad way of doing business too. Take the Office 2007 for example. Been the same way for 15 years, with FILE EDIT VIEW on the menu. Now they tore out the menu completely and put it all in a little rainbow button, presumably to reduce clutter. All it did was require half the human population to spend weeks relearning how to do the simplest of tasks, screwing up what worked perfectly fine as it was.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I read the first page of comments and started into the second page of comments, then left in a hurry; that much unrelenting stupid in one place may be contagious.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Clearly, or he would have a better grasp of just how stupid the bottom 50 percentile of Internet users are.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I used to fear people like this. Now I just try to laugh it off.

A grandmother of three, sharp as a whip in many cases. I asked her which web browser she used, and she responded, straight faced, "...Windows?"

She honestly did not know.

She still writes email in all caps. We ask her not to, and she says it helps her see the text better, because she refuses to learn about Fonts.

The list goes on.