Psychologist: "If You're Not On Facebook, You Could Be A Psychopath"

According to an article printed in the German magazine Der Taggspiegel, not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer. Even though he has no evidence to substantiate his claims, psychologist Christopher Moeller told the magazine that using Facebook has become a sign of having a healthy social network. According to him, not having a Facebook profile must than be a sign of some personality disorder.

As examples the article uses Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik, who used MySpace instead of Facebook and the Aurora shooter who used adultfriendfinder instead of Facebook. They already consider those with Facebook accounts, who lack friends to be suspicious, but now they are suggesting that anyone who abstains from Facebook altogether may be even more suspicious.

A few comments on the article (posted on the DailyMail site):

"What absoloute drivel, have these idiots never heard of the right to privacy? I do not need to have 10,000 "friends" or inform the world of my status when I am just about to go to the loo! Get a life you plonkers."

"So a psychologist says having 500 hundred pretend friends is a sign of a healthy social network! No wonder I don't trust them. As for employers, they just want to spy on you!"

"The government is data mining every internet activity. Some time in the near future storage and speed will be sufficient to store and sift it all in real time. If you want to be a helpless drone then just keep going on as if everything's hunky dory. Unless more people rebel against the fascism masquerading as Democracy all over Ex-Christendom in the future only outlaws will be free."

"That's funny because I just spent several minutes searching through Google for Psychologist Christopher Moeller and found nothing apart from an article relating to this 'research.' ..."

And a few from Slashdot:

"So using megadoses of peer-pressure to get everyone on Facebook isn't enough anymore... Now not being on Facebook is actually considered to be a serious clue that there is something seriously wrong with you? What a load of bullshit. What a load of bullshit. What a load of bullshit. ------ Many ordinary people who are smart about privacy do not put their lives on Facebook for a very good reason: Zuckerbook exists purely to make money, and cannot be TRUSTED with the details of your life, however mundane they may be. 3 cheers for everyone who abstains from Facebook for privacy reasons. Hip-Hip-Hooray."

"It's strange that a German publication would be so quick to make these sorts of suggestions. Did they learn nothing from the examples of the Stasi and East Germany? If the leaders of East Germany and the Stasi could have seen the Facebook of today they probably would have be green with envy. How else to describe billions of people willingly and naively participating in their own mass surveillance? To what sinister purpose might this information be put in the future? It's impossible to believe that the governments of this world, even those who claim to be democratic, will not be sorely tempted to acquire and misuse the information currently being gathered by the likes of Facebook. That's a pretty high price to pay, in my opinion, for keeping up with your friends. To those using Facebook: Have you not considered the long term consequences of what your doing? Are you nuts? Delete the Facebook account and pick up some good history books instead. You will see that history has not been kind to the gullible and the naive."