Vol. 8, Issue 5, May 18, 2010
Devil Complains that Facebook Changed Terms of Diabolical Contract
Lucifer, prince of darkness, is complaining that Facebook has changed the terms of its contract with him and that the social networking site is seeking to capitalize off of information on his unholy network of friends.
"I at no time specified that information about the thirteen Demons that Must Not Be Named could be resold to internet marketing corporations," Lucifer told reporters at his home in D.C. the other day. "The demons just cosigned the contract as witnesses! Now they're getting targeted spam and have all been automatically signed up with Farmville accounts!"
Facebook, the leading social networking site with over 400 million registered users, has increasingly come under fire for its constantly shifting privacy standards and for disingenuously sharing the vast amounts of personal information it aggregates with marketers across the world.
"Well we all assumed that [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg had made a deal with the Devil," said tech entrepreneur Lazarus Portnoy. "I mean, he got rich by enabling people to give each other virtual 'pokes'. There's no way you can succeed with something so moronic without diabolical help. However, I find that I'm sort of ambivalent about these latest contract shenanigans. I mean, I find myself sort of sympathizing with the Devil."
The co-opting of Lucifer's personal information, such as his network of forty-three billion Facebook 'friends' - including many of history's most profligate spenders - is seen as a major business coup for Facebook, whose common stock has recently been valued at over $10 billion.
"The damned are a pretty hot target demographic right now," said Wired business analyst Craig McLean. "We are in a world where consumer habits are only slightly affected by such old-fashioned life events as death. Dying doesn't even affect your credit score anymore. But Mark Zuckerberg is the first one to figure out how to effectively reach these people, and he cut a very clever deal to do it."
Although the details aren't well known, everyone has always assumed that Mark had made a deal with the devil.
"It's pretty much de rigeur if you want to turn a startup you're running from your garage or dorm room into a multibillion dollar corporation," said McLean. "They teach you all this stuff in business school - best places to ask for diabolical underwriting, how venture capital works in the outermost circles of the inferno, and so forth."
However, Zuckerberg is the first to successfully manipulate the terms of his contract in his own favor.
"You know, Lucifer was so busy making sure I signed in my own blood that he apparently didn't read the Facebook privacy agreement in detail," said Zuckerberg. "It pretty clearly gives me the right to revert soul settings to default in subparagraph 312. I can't believe he trusted me. How dumb can you get?"
"Who can read through all that weasel-worded legalese?" said a visibly agitated Lucifer, clicking frantically through the revised privacy settings on his account. "Oh, hell, now my photos 'may be used by select advertisers to enhance my friends' Facebook experience'? I'm calling my lawyers."
