I am on a personal mission to eliminate or at least minimize my exposure to energy vampires. This includes toxic relationships, people, attitudes, outlook and things that siphon off your positive energy. Part of the task also involves jumpstarting personal projects that have long been waiting to see the light of day.

Thus the switch from Friendster to Facebook.

After years of complaining while stubbornly ploughing through pages that slowly started to resemble grafitti walls, I finally let two of my friends talk me into crossing over. And may I say, the grass is definitely greener here on the other side. Cool apps, clean layout, not to mention the addicting games (hello Mafia Wars!). It almost made me kick myself for taking such a long time to move.

As a parting word to that world I now leave behind, here’s my list of pleas to the currently active friendster users who might be reading this blog.  (**Warning: Bato-bato sa langit, ang tamaan ay huwag magagalit…)

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1) Be kind. Turn it down.
This is what finally drove me over the edge. Imagine having a headset on while you’re browsing through friendster’s pages. You have a new friend request, it says. Click on the person’s profile page to jog your memory a bit and then…

… you find yourself caught in between a cardiac arrest and permanent deafness due to the page’s blaring music. It’s an experience akin to taking a walk at Raon in the Philippines, where you are exposed to eardrum-shattering sounds played by the stalls that line the sidewalks.

At least in Raon, you know what to expect.

2) No to Strikes.
Strikeout fonts are called as such precisely because that’s what they are — for erasing text. Used in moderation, they’re intended to inform the readers of the corrections made in an article. Taken one step further, it can be used to add a touch of drama, irony or humor in a piece.

It’s a headache, not to mention a reader’s nightmare, trying to decipher what is written underneath that horizontal line. Sometimes you ask yourself why you even bother. 

Call me nitpicking, but why would someone seeking to validate his/her existence in the virtual world, go through all the effort of filling up an entire profile page only to strike off everything in the end?

It’s for aesthetics, they say. Yet another proof that beauty is indeed in the eyes of the beholder.

3) Flash… Lights… Aaaggghhh! My eyeeees!
Speaking of eyesores, let’s talk about colors.

To be more specific, the manipulation of colors to produce a desired effect. To narrow things down further, the basic rules that govern the relationship between the text and background color:

Rule #1: Thou shalt make sure that the text and background color complement each other. Light background equals dark text. Light text is to dark background.

Rule #2: Thou shalt refrain from employing neon colors as your dominant shade lest you blind all present and future readers. Users who render all texts in neon (e.g. blinking electric pink fonts) should be punished by being forced to look at it non-stop, without blinking his/her eyes for an hour.

Rule #3: Thou shalt not make yourself look crazy, or worse sadistic, by wasting time in typing all that text, only to render it unreadable due to an inappropriate choice of background design. A candidate background may look really cool as a stand-alone, but it is never an assurance of the same effect once you have text printed all over it.

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They say, you have no right to complain about something if you’re not doing anything about it. And so I did.

Goodbye Friendster. Hello Facebook. I’ll be keeping my friendster account mainly for announcements of blog updates and birthday greetings to friends I’ve had there for several years.

Next possible switch in my list… PC to MAC? Hmmm… we’ll see about that.

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**PS: Somebody join my Mafia Wars clan please? I keep getting my butt kicked due to lack of members. Hehe.