I hate Facebook. Making a list of the reasons for my blood curdling hatred of this behemoth of enshittification and rage bait, that Mark Zuckerberg may or may not have stolen, would result in a document the size of the Magic: the Gathering Comprehensive Rules.
So while it's safe to say that I'm not a fan, I'm also mature enough to acknowledge what Facebook does (or rather did) well; events. You create an event, invite people, add some broth, a potato, and baby, you got a stew/event going! Which is the way I and other local TO's have arranged tournaments for years. However as more and more people log off Facebook, keeping tabs on attendance on Facebook and taking people not on Facebook into account, becomes tiresome.
Despite this, when the date for Slaughter Island III was settled, I immediately logged on to Zuckerberg's Portal of Friendship and Agreeability, and eagerly created the event. Before inviting my carefully curated list of lucky prospective attendees, I challenged the largest LLM's (Large Language Model, or AI as some people call it) to create a banner image for me, to get the hype going.
Armed with a photo of Slåtterøy that I fed into the LLM and a prompt calling for a retro styled science fiction B-movie poster with some kind of monster as a nemesis, drawing inspiration from the photo of the lighthouse, with elements of old school magic the gathering from 93/94, I excitedly pressed enter.
Of the three, ChatGPT definitely was closest to what I wanted, but something wasn't right. It felt too distanced from the real horrors that inhibit Slaughter Island. And then it struck me; Bæælzebub.
You see, the sheep that are evil and don't get along with the other sheep, are sent to this ovine Alcatraz. And last year, one particularly demonic specimen tried to stop us from slinging our beautiful ancient cardboard:
Adding the image above to the prompt, along with a scientifically accurate and unbiased description of the animal in question, yielded the results I needed for my banner for the event I was creating on Facebook:
Equipped with my artificially generated masterpiece, I was ready to add people to my event. I opened the list of people Facebook suggested I add to the event, which, due to my job, mostly consisted of members of the city council of Bergen, the mayor and several other members of Bergen's political and bureaucratic elite. I quickly found both Sindre and Johannes and promptly added a checkmark in the empty box next to their names. Seeing none of the other names on my shortlist, I turned my attention to the search bar and entered the name of Arnfinn, but Facebook returned an error; "Can't find the page" or something like that.
I tried again, this time another name; "Can't find the page"
I tried again, this time on a laptop; "Can't find the page"
I tried scrolling through the plethora of Bergen's political and bureaucratic elite; "Can't find the page"
I waited a few hours and did all of the above once more; "Can't. Find. The. Mother. Fucking. Page."
So now I had an event with two invitees and couldn't invite anyone else on my list. Facebook had finally shed its last functional feature and reached its final form by ascending to level 10 in the Church of Enshittification.
After the Black Death, the Renaissance was born, through the cracks of the Dark Ages, shone the light of the Age of Enlightenment, from the ashes of the Second World War, we put a man on the Moon and from the shit stains of the steaming turd that is Facebook, the website you are reading these ramblings on, has come to life.