Anti-Facebook film becomes internet hit. . . on Facebook

IT’S CALLED You Need To Get Off Facebook and has become the latest internet sensation - with most people watching it on Facebook.

A YouTube film made by a Scottish teacher living in South Korea about the perils of using social networking site Facebook has racked up almost 2.5 million hits online – the same number as Madonna’s most recent single, Revolver.

The six-minute film, which features cards with messages, such as “You don’t have 852 friends” and “one or more of these ‘friends’ are looking at your photographs right now”... “and judging you”, was made by 24-year-old Ross Gardiner, from Ballachulish, who says he became frustrated with the grip the social networking site was exercising over young people.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It was featured in last week’s recent BBC2 documentary about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and, ironically, thousands of people posted the film in their own Facebook profiles.

Gardiner said he wrote the script for the film – in which he is shown holding up placards with anti-Facebook messages in a busy South Korean street – “in about 20 minutes in between teaching Korean toddlers how to pronounce ‘fish’ and stopping them from putting crayons up their noses”. He admits he used to be an avid Facebook user and was “always online or day dreaming about being online”.

“I wasn’t actually using Facebook for anything,” he said. I was just sitting wasting time on it. I wasn’t promoting anything or even keeping in touch with anyone from home.”

He says he has been overwhelmed by the response to the film. “I still can’t quite get my head around it,” he said.