Facebook, as helpful as ever, has just informed me that "Frankie has unlocked extra questions on 21 questions!". As the slightly dismayed looking squirrel in the icon tells me, "The extra questions make the game more fun!" Oh, the joys of technology. Apart from wondering how the game can still be called 21 questions with the inclusion of this wondrous addition, I can't help but feel slightly depressed by this small update.

This is what passes as entertainment these days, then, is it? God help us all. Now, maybe I'm being presumptuous here, but isn't Facebook, as a website, all about bringing people together and giving them another means through which to socialise? The fact is that most of these addons and applications that have been flooding into my live feed the last few months have not, in any way, been connected to the main aim of Facebook: social networking. A large proportion of them seem to be targeted at cultivating the "sitting at your monitor playing pointless games when you could be doing something much more productive" audience.

This irritates me.

And yes - I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm just as much of a culprit of this idle sitting around doing nothing on Facebook and similar sites as anyone else, but, in some ways, that just makes it even more annoying to me. Perhaps the fact that these mindless games have also managed to wheedle their way into my own free time, even though they are so intensely irritating to me, is what fustrates me so much.

It's one of the areas which I actually think makes Twitter a very good tool as social networking sites go - it knows what it's for, and it sticks to that. It doesn't try to be some kind of arcade or advice centre, because that's not what it was designed for. Apps have watered down the actual content of Facebook, which is the people, the views and the opinions.

However, there is one genre of application that I believe trumps even 21 questions and its kin in its ability to grate on my senses, and that is what I like to describe as the "Look at me" quiz.

What colour eyes do you have? Which member of JLS are you? What flowr r u? If YoU wErE a SmAlL sOuTh AmErIcAn GoLdFiSh, WhAt WoUlD yOuR nAmE bE?

What possible useful information could anyone possibly hope to gain from this genre? In my opinion, a quiz can have only one aim: to find out how good you are at something, usually in competition with someone else so that whoever wins gets the right to lord it over everyone else and generally be an arse about it until they are beaten at something else by someone else. Now, I'm not sure, but I don't think these particular quizzes manage even that (in my opinion fairly boring) objective, since the outcome is not on a scale; there's nothing to measure your success against anyone else's success.

Worse than that, they're simply innacurate. I mean, how can a computer program possibly guess the colour of your eyes without actually having a picture of you or a sample of your DNA? It can't, and the thought that a large amount of Facebook users can be fooled into thinking this is a worthwhile use of their time is a saddening one.

No, these apps have no purpose, they are simply there to post on your page and say "Look, world, I'm still here, I'm still doing something and I still want you to look at me", in that snobbish way we have of thinking that what we have to say is worth listening to.

In the end, I think these apps detract from what Facebook is all about. If the aim is to get people to talk to each other and connect, surely the main attraction shouldn't be solitary games and the boosting of already inflated egos. While I'm at it, is it not more productive towards this aim to, instead of sitting at your computer with the vague illusion of social interaction, go out and actually do some real socialising?

Just to clarify, this particular rant is not directed soleley at Facebook or its users and applications; I've got plenty of more specific gripes in reserve. These points could just as well apply to any social networking site with similar features, but it's a good example. I'll save the Facebook groups feature for its own post.