I can’t believe I’m friends with you…part 3

With so much status abuse happening on facebook you’d think someone would step in and do something about it. Next one between my crosshairs…

5) Passive Aggressive Prima Donna

Perhaps the worst of these status abusers is the passive aggressive statement to the world at large. Something like “Don’t you love it when people make you feel good about your weight”, supersaturated with sarcasm to the point that it is literally dripping out the pores. Not that I should complain about sarcasm. Heck, I’ve reached a level of sarcasm beyond mortal comprehension. I call it supersasm and its so highly developed that sometimes even I don’t know if I’m being sarcastic – it really is a gift. But enough about me and my impeccable narcissism, we’re talking about prima donnas and their statements to the world at large, except everyone knows that its directed at someone in particular and more importantly that person is normally a facebook friend who probably should be deleted, but you keep so you can check if they’re saying anything mean about you.

Here’s my favourite response to statements like these, especially if they have been indirectly focussed on me… I click “like”. Passive-aggressive is as passive-aggressive does (whatever the hell that means).

6) Lovely Dovey

This may be the challenger for the absolute worst form of status abuse. The update that is saccharin and honey coated that it could induce a sugar coma (if it weren’t for the fact that your body’s natural defence mechanisms will cause you to throw up). I’m scared to even paraphrase let alone quote verbatim one such update but here it goes (have some insulin ready).

“Hey sweetie pie lovie bunch shnookles…” okay okay I give up! I couldn’t finish it, was starting to black out. The fact is we get it you’re madly in love and want your significant other to know, but really do you need to message them on their wall or in your status for all the world to witness? No, no you don’t. Keep it to yourself and save the world from adult onset diabetes.

For the above reasons and more I have decided to switch to twitter. Before you get all wise and wonder why I hate facebook status updates when twitter is essentially just status updates, hear me out. The difference is… I don’t have to listen to you just because you listen to me. It’s not a two way street. On facebook, I have to hear your rampant status abuse as much as you have to listen to mine because we’re “friends” and that’s what “friends” do. While on twitter all I have to do is unfollow and we can pretend to be “friends” in the real world.

Rant over… for now.

I can’t believe I’m friends with you… part 2

After last week’s rant about the aberrant abuse of status updates on facebook I’m back with more and hopefully I can get through this without choking on my own rage.

3) Cheer up Emo kid
These status updates kill me. When someone posts an updates like “what is the point of living?” or something like that, what are you supposed to do? I’m not trying to be insensitive here if this is a call out for help. But what the heck is the point of a statement like that except to attention seeking, which is why immediately after a million women will comment with “cheer up friendly” or “keep smiling, you’re beautiful”.

I have no problem with providing support and friendship to those who are in need, but being manipulated into it by some emo kid who’s “life is over” at 14 because her boyfriend got grounded and will miss their 3 month anniversary of the time they held hands, is a bit much. Also facebook really missed the boat here only providing a “like” button, because there’s something a little insensitive about responding to “I wish I could end it all” with “Gareth likes this”

4) Unoriginal Comic Genius
You know what the most difficult part about being an original comedian? The “original” part. Anyone can tell someone else’s jokes (and ruin it just as easily), but it takes a lot of hard work and real comedic talent to come up with a truly funny and original one liner. Unfortunately facebook is full of thieves with the mindset of “look how funny I am when I Google one liners”.

They then paste these lines into their status updates without any reference to the originator or even the courtesy of quotation marks or the liability “get out of jail free card” of writing “anon” afterwards. What irks me even more so is after all their friends “like” the comment or respond with “that’s so funny”, “lol” or “you’re really funny please have sex with me”, there is still not even an ounce of guilt in their thieving little minds. Worst of all if you ever confront them about stealing someone else’s material the response is either “I didn’t know” (what you didn’t know you didn’t write it? Like you couldn’t remember if you came up with this line or if you typed “funny one liners” into Google and copy pasted the result?) or “It’s just a joke, get a sense of humour”.

“Get a sense of humour?!?!” that’s the point. I have one that’s why I have the sense not to steal other comedians work. *deep breath* *count to ten*. I hope you invent something incredible like the self cleaning toilet one day and it gets stolen before you patent it and you cry about it for the rest of your life, alone in some bar, unemployed because you can’t even get a job cleaning toilets because someone already invented a toilet that cleans itself.

There are still a few more status abusers that need to be mentioned, but we’ll do that next week.

I can’t believe I’m friends with you…part 1

Communication is important. Everyone will tell you that from cheesy corporate orientation videos and relationship counsellors to the unemployed mime begging at the street light. Perhaps no market has developed faster in fact than that of communications from smoke signals; to the postal industry; telephones; the internet; cell phones and of course the new kid on the block: social networking sites.

Social networking sites are huge and in fact are the only thing on the internet that people spend more time on than porn. But these social networking sites go in and out of fashion and while one day a site can have millions of members the next it looks like an abandoned amusement park (eg Myspace).

In the end they all try to be like facebook, the most successful of all these sites, but I have to admit I loathe facebook and not for the reasons most people do. I don’t really mind that you send me Farmville requests or that you tag me in photos I’m not in. I ignore you inviting me to events that I have no interest in attending partly because I’m not that into your thrash metal band “Demon Doctor” but mainly because your event isn’t in the same city as me (as “tempting” as a cross-country road trip sounds). None of this concerns me, nor does the poking or friend requests from people I don’t know (or worse that I purposefully ignore).

What does get to me and why I can’t stand facebook is unfortunately its most basic function. I hate (and yes I know its “hate” is a strong word)… status updates.

Maybe I’m coming on a little strong here and people just don’t understand what status updates are for or more importantly what they are not for. Status updates are intended to let people know something interesting – the subject matter may vary, but they should always be interesting. I have managed to separate the different forms of “status abuse” into a few key demographics.

1) Captain Pointless (or mundane)
These updates normally follow with remarks like “and then…” or yawns of boredom all concerns as to which is scarier that someone’s life is that boring or that they took the time to tell everyone about it. Here I’m talking about updates such as “Wow what a delicious sandwich” or “Taking Sam to a movie”. This is facebook’s opportunity to add to the inadequate “like” button and finally add a “yawn” or “meh” button. These statuses are the kind that handbrake conversations at a dinner party where a group will be discussing the latest works by their favourite actors or directors for someone to interrupt with the line “I also like movies”.

2) Trolls…
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the internet slang “troll” it is not a mythical beast bound to caves and billy-goat-trafficked bridges. A troll is someone who makes a comment for the sole purposes of antagonising others and provoking an emotional response. They get some sick sense of accomplishment by posting remarks that cause other people to fight with each other and will often not post a single other response, but sit back and watch other people tear into each other. Comments such as the “PS3 is way better than the X-Box 360” or “Man United are posers” are the types of comments that are designed for no purpose other than bait for the “fan-boy” debates.
Don’t worry there’s more… next week.

It’s all just a popularity contest… and I’m losing

So, I recently posted a video on this little known website which you’ve probably never heard of called “YouTube”. It was a collaborative effort between me and Johannesburg comedian, Deep Fried Man. It received over 8000 hits in 3 days which makes it the greatest thing I have ever done (in YouTube terms – by about 7920 hits, seems people weren’t that interested in footage of my first set). Just to put that into perspective, this video received about as many hits as this blog gets in a month, in about 10 hours.

I’m not sure whether to chalk it down to the fact that it really is a good video (which you are more than welcome to check out for yourself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGUUmfb_Ac ), whether this blog is not actually that good, or if it’s just that Deep Fried is just way more popular than me, but my mom says that’s not the case.

But could it be that I’m not actually that popular? I mean I have a fair few fans on facebook and a few followers on Twitter, but it’s quite easy to become obsessed with these numbers, like it’s some sort of score and he who dies with most followers, wins. It’s like this uncontrollable gold rush for the souls of followers. Even God and Satan are at it with @satan having 23369 followers, while @god has 71337 (whether this is the one true God we’ve been looking for is unknown since the account hasn’t been verified, but then who has the nerve to demand God verifies his account?) Although both would be completely dominated if Kim Kardashian had to form a religion with her 9.4 million followers… although I do believe that is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

These numbers – followers, fans, friends, likes and views! One can get totally obsessed with them completely wearing out the F5 key on your keyboard.

It really is demoralising to look at some of the other things that have more fans than I do on facebook. For example I have barely a fraction of the fans that “Music” has (and yes I mean “music” not even a particular genre) which as of 30 August 2011 had 2,6billion fans and “Movies” had 11billion – COME ON! I like Movies and Music too…like me! Anyway what kind of ridiculous fan page is that to follow? Music? Who the hell doesn’t like music? Not even deaf people hate music. I’m calling Bullshit!

But that’s not where the humiliation stops; I have nowhere near as many fans as “headaches”. Yes that throbbing, pulsing excruciating and blinding pain that can be completely debilitating, has more fans on facebook than I do with 2176 fans. To make it worse, “Death” has more fans… A LOT more fans. Seriously?! Death?! The End of it all? Lack of Life? The thing we all spend billions on trying to avoid for our entire lives has more fans than a guy who makes people laugh? I call Bullshit!

I’m just stoked I beat out belly button lint (not by much though) which only has 240 fans… seriously?!?