The US Army recently issued a warning foreboding soldiers regarding the poisonous chokehold of social networking site, Facebook, which has approximately 845 million worldwide victims to date. The warnings stated how, once registered, members would be continually harassed with ‘pokes’ and prods from people they vaguely remember meeting once in the queue for the local ‘Hole-in-the-wall’ ATM but suddenly claim that they are a ‘friend’, consequently beleaguering newsfeeds with Farmville and alternative unwanted virtual gaming requests. Users will continuously refresh the home page every couple of minutes in an entranced, seemingly unbreakable cycle, waiting in anticipation for the imminent inevitably grammatically incorrect statuses of members consistently using incorrect versions of ‘they’re, their and there’ where appropriate.
More than one million mobile phone users in the United States now use smartphones, according to a study published this week by Comscore, a market research firm. The British Army, however, has banned the use of all mobile phones due to the compulsion to log into social networking sites such as Facebook, not just due to the geo-tagging location facility that could potentially give away soldiers’ locations, but primarily due to the fact that a ‘poke war’ may ensue among the forces, and ‘that kind of thing may be used to an enemy’s advantage to weaken their spirit’ insighted Daniel Sherman of defence think tank Royal United Services Institute.
