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The Day the Page Stood Still

10.17.08 is the Day the Page Stood Still.

At least that’s what may be in store for Facebook, if the site’s protest group 1,000,000 Against the New Facebook Layout! has its way. The group, which already boasts 2,769,709 members as of the writing of this post, is asking members to tune in, stand up, and log out of Facebook (as it were) over the weekend of October 17-21 to protest the social neworking site’s new makeover.

“We are just beginning the process of moving people over to the new Facebook and saying goodbye to the old Facebook,” wrote Mark Slee, product manager for Facebook, in a September 10 blog post on the site. “We set out to make Facebook simpler, cleaner, more relevant, and easier to control. With your feedback and participation … we believe we’ve gotten to the best Facebook yet.”

A few million users don’t quite agree.

Will the online backlash succeed in restoring the beloved old layout? We’ll soon find out. Let’s just hope they don’t unleash the social networking equivalent of Gort, the giant indestructible robot (pictured above) from the 1951 classic sci-fi film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” That movie was about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth to warn us of our imminent doom if we do not stop our warring and destructive ways. Not so far off the mark, actually, to the current online situation. Facebook beware.

Film studies side-bar: I could be wrong (and often am on these things)… but I believe Gort is actually supposed to symbolize the fearsome, uncontrollable power of technology to destroy mankind. The case of Facebook potentially destroying itself? Or, thinking of the current financial meltdown, unfettered capitalism destroying our economic system? Gort-on Gecko?

Either way, we’ll all have a chance to see a new and improved ominpotent robot this December when a remake starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly and Mad Men’s John Hamm hits the theaters. None, unfortunately, in the scene-stealing role of the big bad machine.