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.