Have you noticed on Facebook, not only is the marketing as subtle as thermonuclear war, but now you can be a fan of…well…just about anything.

This has been going on for some time now, I initially signed up for ‘fan of sleep’.

Now I see ‘Birds for Brains’ and ‘No Drama’ are asking me to be fans of them, or those concepts, or whatever.

Is it important for me to declare I am a fan of  ‘No Drama’?  Are there fans of ‘intentional chaos creation’?

I see there is another box asking me to be a fan of ‘That’s what she said’.  Now, I am a big fan of  ‘The Office’…am I less a fan if I don’t sign up for this?  Of course not.

Look at your page.  Mine constantly tries to push Vikings and Dodgers paraphernalia on me.  I am pretty easy to figure out.  In fact, ‘mine’ is the key word here.  All of your friends, messages, photos and status updates are thrown into a database.  It can be analyzed, sold, and targeted to an increasing extent.

In the U.S. it looks like we are willingly giving up our privacy rights, but Europe is a bit more leery and perhaps we should be too.  I love the title of this article: The Looming Facebook Privacy Fiasco.

I have written extensively about the quizzes and games all that require you to OK the use of your personal information and that of your friends.  I never, ever read those terms of service check boxes.  Simply put, most programs just don’t work if you don’t click ‘yes’ to those boxes.  It is not like you can enter some sort of extended contractual manipulation to negotiate some middle ground.  “I’d be willing not to plan governmental takeovers with Excel however you’ll have to allow me to use Powerpoint to detail my new musical starring Paul Reiser about the life of Nicola Tesla to potential overseas investors (not all the money is legit).  You want Microsoft Office to work, you have to agree to give Bill Gates your DNA sequencing and perhaps an organ if you are compatible and he needs it at a later date.

However this Facebook stuff is different.  You probably don’t HAVE to be in a Mafia War.  You don’t HAVE to join the ‘no drama’ fanclub.

I know what some of you are thinking…you don’t HAVE to be on Facebook either.

Well, as my job is as much marketing as it is anything else, we have a mutually beneficial self-interest.  Facebook wants my fantastic pictures, snappy status updates, and world-renowned blog (and every birth date, educational and work experience I ever had as well as my last 1000 food orders) .  I need a viral unconscious social networking super computer willing to distribute content without judgment to the universe whether they want it or not.

It is a deal.  I am just a fan of being a fan of less.  But make sure to share, tweet, and follow my blog.  I am definitely consistent about being inconsistent.