Review: The Facebook Diet by Gemini Adams

Title: The Facebook Diet: 50 Funny Signs of Facebook Addiction and Ways to Unplug with a Digital Detox

Author: Gemini Adams

Format: Spiral-bound, 175 pages

Pub. Date: January 1st 2014

Source: TT @ Never Ending Stories



Book Description via Goodreads:

Award-winning author and illustrator, Gemini Adams, inspires us to examine the health of our high-tech habits in this entertaining gift book with a tongue-in-cheek look at our love of social media.

This Mom's Choice Gold Award winning book features a series of 50 hilarious cartoons that complete the question, "You Know You're a Facebook Addict When...?" in which Adams cleverly illustrates the more idiotic, embarrassing and cringe-worthy behaviors of our social networking excess.

Packed with funny digital detox tips that gently 'poke' at readers to unplug once in a while, this laugh-out-loud gift book is guaranteed to bring a smile of recognition to Facebook junkies everywhere!

Review:

★

This is one of those rare times where I feel like I read an entirely different book than everyone else. I didn't find it funny at all. It's not that I didn't get where the humor was supposed to be, I got it. It just wasn't funny. The first half of the book is completions to the sentence "You might be addicted to Facebook if..." The second half is a "diet" of how to stop logging so much time online.

First of all, I didn't care for the illustrations. I thought they were pretty badly done. Plus, it was unnecessarily crass more than once. Regular readers of my reviews know I'm no prude: I read quite a lot of erotica and the like. So it's not an "I'm offended" thing. But there were two drawings of female nudity that didn't add anything- it wasn't funny. There's also a toilet with stink lines. Classy.

This book is already a few years old, and it shows. There's a few "jokes" about poking.... Do people still poke? That was a thing when Facebook first got popular but I honestly forgot that was even a feature.

Some of them weren't even worth a smile. Such as, the guy with a gun to his head at his birthday party because he didn't get enough birthday wishes on his wall. (See the above note about being dated- it's a timeline, not a wall). There's one about needing therapy after reading about perfect friends- that's an actual study being done, because that shit actually DOES lead to depression.

Some of them just aren't accurate, in addition to not being funny. Wrist strain, for example, is not Facebook-specific. There's one that says you've given up addictions like smoking and drinking to Facebook. Because one can't drink at a desk?

Some of them actually sound like people who have never had Facebook before, not addicts. One says "you don't know where your privacy settings are". If you're addicted, you know EVERYTHING about these filters, and you've made lists and posts locked to certain people that now by this point, you can censor yourself with ease. Also, that you send friend requests to everyone. Nope. That shit's not safe. There's a difference between being addicted, and being clueless as to how the interwebs work.

The second half is full of mostly silly and overdramatic for humor's sake things that one can do instead of being on Facebook, like being a PI so you can stalk people in real life. Not really funny, but I get what they were going for. However, in this "diet" that stresses unplugging and going outside, they actually promote other websites...... What? Seriously?

I honestly have no idea who this book is for. It's not for young addicts, that's for sure. The only demographic I can maybe see getting a chuckle out of this book are those old relatives who don't really know how things work, but still won't get off of Facebook.

I don't recommend it as a gift or a stocking stuffer, unless you know a woman as oblivious as this book is.