The Agency's Posts

Movies that Tony Scott left behind: The filmmaker was developing projects, including a 'Top Gun' sequel. Their futures are unknown.....
Read More>

Late Night: Meryl Streep is game for Jack Nicholson (just playing): Meryl Streepmight be one of the world’s most acclaimed performers, but that doesn’t....
Read More>

'Expendables 2' beats out 'ParaNorman,' 'Sparkle,' 'Timothy Green': "The Expendables 2"may have knocked out the competition at the box office this....
Read More>

Take Two Explosions and Call Me in the Morning: Just when you think the action-hero-filled“Expendables 2”has forgotten that this....
Read More>

Feverishly Pursuing a Nondigital Chase: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Dodges Traffic in ‘Premium Rush’ IT took a lot of nerve for....
Read More>

'Smash' to deliver a 'Will & Grace' reunion in Season 2: Well, you can't blame NBC for trying. With the Broadway-focused musical series"Smash&quo
Read More>

Snoop Lion: 'La La La' and a rapper's transition into reggae: What's a reggae song without the lingo? What's a lion without a roar? These and other mystical....
Read More>

Television review: Matthew Perry is best thing about 'Go On': The new NBC sitcom starring the former 'Friends' star as a Type A sports talk radio host show has....
Read More>

Review: 'Total Recall' insists you won't believe it: 'Total Recall' has a believable lead in Colin Farrell, but the rest of it, though fun at times,....
Read More>

She's Everything He Wants, and Therein Lies the Problem: Ruby Sparks, Written by and Starring Zoe Kazan "Ruby Sparks" stars Paul Dano and....
Read More>

Giving a Voice to a Big-Picture Thinker: Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry, on the Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei, right, in the new film of his....
Read More>

Timid Close Encounters of the Small-Town Kind: The Watch, With Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn From left, Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, Richard....
Read More>

Meet the Murderer, the Best of a Bad Lot: Killer Joe, Directed by William Friedkin Matthew McConaughey in "Killer Joe."....
Read More>

The Fretful Birth of the New Western: Kirk Douglas in “Lonely Are the Brave” (1962), adapted from a novel by Edward....
Read More>
'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' takes on Facebook with National Unfriend Day
Posted on: 11/21/11
Share/Save/Bookmark
 

Jimmy Kimmel uses his show to urge people to 'whittle' their Facebook friends lists by promoting National Unfriend Day. He's only half-joking.



It still lacks the grandeur of, say, Administrative Professionals Day. But Jimmy Kimmel is hoping his campaign to weed those overgrown Facebook friend rosters will become an American tradition.

Thursday is the second annual National Unfriend Day, which the ABC late-night host is sponsoring to help persuade Facebook users to trim their burgeoning friend lists, which often number in the hundreds and occasionally in the thousands.

"I really feel like it's gonna replace the Jerry Lewis telethon," Kimmel joked in a phone interview this week. "We're hoping to get Norm Crosby this year … We're hoping that it goes on as long as there's a Facebook."

Started in 2004, Facebook, now the world's premier social-media site, with more than 800 million users, is just one year younger than "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" — which is not quite the world's premier late-night talk show, but it's doing OK, thanks. As they've grown up together, Kimmel has grown progressively more vexed by the online service, which he views as a gigantic waste of time — time that could be better spent, for example, watching ABC's late-night television block.

"Everyone I work with is on Facebook all the time," Kimmel said. "I just don't understand why they're interested in what somebody they went to the fifth grade with is having for lunch … I decided it would be a good idea to encourage people to whittle those friends down."

Kimmel's show has an active Facebook fan page but for his personal page the host uses an alias — a big no-no for Facebook, which prefers users to keep their real identities.

"I never check it and I have, like, eight friends," he said. "They're all family members."

As comedy stunts go, crossing swords with the world's second-most-popular website (behind Google) might not be a bad gimmick. But there are some serious issues lurking behind Kimmel's quest.

As Facebook has surged in popularity — especially since 2006, when it opened up beyond students to anyone over the age of 13 — users have struggled with how to incorporate the service into their lives. Just this week, Facebook was struck by a spam attack that filled some users' news feeds with pornographic and violent images.

A more common problem arises with "friending," or the process of choosing the people who populate each user's personal network. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project found that 66% of adults online use social media, and two-thirds of those cited connecting with friends as a major reason for using the services.

But on Facebook, the meaning of the word "friend" has been stretched to include people the user has never met and indeed has never even heard of before.

"These people are not your friends," Kimmel scoffed. "No one has 2,000 friends."

Kayla Bourgeois, an account executive at Raleigh, N.C.-based ad agency Howard, Merrell & Partners, wrote an online essay in September describing her efforts to trim her list of nearly 1,000 Facebook friends to just 333.

"The trend with Facebook for a while was to connect with as many people as possible," Bourgeois wrote. "Boost your friend count by keeping up with networking connections, spying on past high school friends, and Facebook-stalking random hotties you met at the bar.

"But after graduating and joining the real world those needs change, along with the people you Facebook friend," she added.

She met her goal by ruthlessly eliminating friends she no longer kept in touch with, all of her current co-workers, some networking contacts and even a few distant relatives. "Nobody was safe," she wrote, adding that she intends to keep her friend list at 333 even as she meets new people — thereby ensuring future cuts.

That kind of thinking would meet Kimmel's approval. But his crusade isn't winning fans among some of the digital elite, who feel it's demeaning to the social-media movement.

"Kimmel's stunt is just that — a dumb stunt," Paul Levinson, an active Twitter user and media professor at Fordham University, wrote in an email.

It "reflects nothing more than that Facebook has become so ubiquitous a part of life that everyone has some frustrations with it, and Facebook has become grist for comedians to poke fun at.

"The reality is none of us can do without Facebook, Twitter or some kind of social media, and that's all to the good, because these media keep us better informed and in touch with people we care about."

Except for people like Kimmel, who claims that his efforts last year led to change at Facebook. "They added a step as far as unfriending people goes; they made it more complicated," he said. "Of course, we attributed that to ourselves. But it probably had nothing to do with it." (A Facebook representative could not be reached for comment.)

But just don't get him started on Farmville, the agricultural game made popular on Facebook.

"If you want to talk about our country in crisis and how things have changed, can you imagine explaining to someone from 40 years ago that there are gonna be imaginary farms and people are gonna work on them all day and they're gonna get nothing out of them and they're gonna tell everyone about it?" Kimmel asked. "That's why we're a mess."‬

COMMENTS
Be the first to post a comment!


Post A Comment:




  • It's 2020! Start booking roles in commercials, fashion, films, theater and more with The Agency Online!

  • NEW WORKSHOP with Barbara Barna & Sean De Simone!

    Hi Everyone and Happy Summer! Sean at Sean De Simone casting and Barbara Barna are teaming up for a super informative and fun Hosting for Home Shopping workshop. A great opportunity for established or experienced TV Hosts and Experts interested in learning how to get noticed and how to get in....
  • MASTERCLASS W. Robin Carus & David John Madore

    A Special Offer for the Agency Community, from one of our favorite NYC Casting Directors! EMAIL FacetheMusicWithUs@gmail.com Or Eventbrite To Sign Up! Class Size is Limited.
  • Don't Fall Into The Comparison Trap

    Hi Everyone! As the second installment in an ongoing series of features by the Agency's amazing community, here's some sage advice from our own Regina Rockensies; a humble (& awesome)veteran we've had the pleasure of working with for a long time. Have an excellent week! : ) - The Agency....
  • One Model's Agreement

    Hi Everyone! As the first piece in an ongoing series of original articles by the Agency community, here's a short reflection on some of the values of professional acting & modeling that we can all keep in mind for our next casting. Good luck on your castings &shoots this week! : ) -....




 
home       castings&news       privacy policy       terms and conditions      contact us      browser tips
Official PayPal Seal