Facebook Vs Pet Owners

A while ago a friend sent me a link to one of those Myspace survey sites. The fact he sent me the link didn't surprise me, but the survey I found did. It was a survey to complete for your pet's Myspace account. Yes your pet's Myspace account. I really did laugh it off. Okay, I do joke that my birds most surely have accounts and that they Myspace all day while I am at work. However, the only time I ever considered making a Myspace account for one of them was as a joke to a friend. How hilarious would it be for said friend to get a friend request from Beaker? Still, I never went through with it. That would be a great deal of work just to make an account as a joke. My birds are my kids, but I am not obsessed enough to think they really need their own Myspace or Facebook accounts. However, some people really do feel the need to make these profiles for their animals.

I never really thought of it as a widespread issue until I joined a cockatiel group on Facebook. Yes, about half the members of the groups were not human, but they were apparently birds. I had to laugh a bit. I'm really apparently just to lazy to keep up with my own Facebook page, let alone make one for one (let alone all four) of my birds. Then I saw the posts start to roll in. Facebook was starting to disable non-human accounts. Of course, the owners of these accounts are all up in arms. They are posting angry comments and creating groups that accuse the site of "speciesism."

I do feel for these owners. They love their animals so much they felt the need to make them their own profile. After putting in the time and energy, it would be disappointing to have the account disabled. Once again, I love my birds. I talk to them and care for them like they were my children, but honestly do I think they would care about some social networking site? I'm just not sold on the idea. I do not think it has anything to do with the emotional distress on the pet. It is all about the humans, and they need to get over it. If the owners would have read Facebook's own policies and procedures, they would see why this was a bad idea in the first place.