I’ve been holding out as well.

I wonder how much of this, uh, trend can be blamed on many Facebookers’ relative unwillingness to disappoint their “friends.” You know the type: Those who accept any friend request from anyone they’ve ever even looked at — and many they haven’t. People who get poked and always just poke right back. Folks who simply cannot ignore that new Bumper Sticker someone threw at them. Or is it goats that get thrown? You know what I mean.

I cant agree more. My favorite part is that, with 30 seconds of looking at the persons profile, you could find out at least 20 of the 25, and much more. Its like “lets use the super great tool for something that it already does, but in a different and more low-tech way”. Bugs the crap out of me.

I’m not a fan of the 25 Things either, but who cares? If people want to do it, let ‘em.

It’s probably worth noting that most of the folks taking part in this thing aren’t your typical bloggers. They don’t blog (or rarely blog), so they don’t have an outlet for this sort of thing. 25 Things comes along, and hey, that sounds like fun.

It’s also worth noting that the popularity of it kills some of your arguments. “It’s hard work,” “It’s not how you use Facebook,” “It takes too much time,” yet 5 million people have done it.

Also, the general population of Facebook isn’t exactly very tech savvy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the tagging feature in Notes used for what its original intention–it’s almost always used as a way to get people to read what you wrote. I tagged you, therefore you should read it. Dumb? Yes. But that’s just how Facebookers use it.

The masses have spoken.

Wish I had read this BEFORE I did my 25 list. Pretty funny!

You know I love you guys but I agree with Kevin- who cares if people do it? Why would participating in this make someone less…I don’t know… less of anything? I did it, and I guess I’m not sure why- I was kind of bored one night and the rest of my family had done it, and I read all of their posts. I was interested to see what things they want other people to know about them. And if other people don’t want to read it, that’s alright. Am I less “tech-savvy” for having done it? I think that’s kind of ridiculous to say.

And is someone really going to be irritated with you for not doing it? I definitely wouldn’t. Also, I didn’t follow the directions well, because I tagged people who I wrote about in the note. I didn’t tag 25 people because I assumed 25 random people wouldn’t care. But I thought that some of the people I did write about, and then some of my closest friends/family who also had participated, might care to read it. I guess in my mind, tagging them doesn’t necessarily obligate anyone to read it, and if they didn’t want to, big deal.

Although I do agree with many of the things you said, Mykl. And I normally ignore most application requests and other notes I see. So I don’t really know what motivated me to participate… hm.

Loving the discussion this has generated. Thanks everyone, especially Kevin & Liz for their excellent points and helping to share the “other side” of the story. For the record, I’m not against it. Just puzzled as to why it’s captured the attention of so many.

You know what, I am in with you there. It is pretty wild how many people felt compelled to participate!

If you really want to get annoyed, I think some of the other notes flying around Facebook are even more inane, like the different kind of names or the iTunes one. Ug. At least the 25 Things one had potential to be interesting.

And Liz, I didn’t mean doing the meme made you less tech-savvy, I just meant non-tech-savvy people are frequently doing it, so something like tagging isn’t likely to be understood in the same way as a tech-savvy crowd would see it.

You had me at #1.

I just don’t get it and it’s annoying.

God, I agree with you completely.

Ha. I tried this but I couldn’t get past #2.

1. I think I’ve seen this chain email before. Yep… yes… I have. Don’t a bunch of orphans get sacrificed if I don’t forward this to enough people?

2. I’m kind of anti-social.

Ok, so I never tried this.

[...] some people more than a little annoyed and they show their determination not to take part in it by taking part in it (in mockery, of [...]