NOTE: I wrote this for a commission last week, but held back on sending it to the client because I was concerned about how funny it was. I thought it was a hoot, but my last comedy article had gone down like a lead balloon with the readership and I was a little gun shy. I have a pretty unique sense of humour and usually things I find funny aren't the slightest bit amusing to other people (and vice versa). Eventually, I emailed it to some friends (some writers, some readers) and they all said it was hilarious, so I made some final adjustments and sent it off. The editor that originally commissioned this piece had loved the idea, but the editor in charge of uploading it (and subsequently paying me) did not. I asked if we could submit it to the original editor, but he refused. Essentially, I was commissioned, did all the work (three days of it, if I'm honest) and then got stiffed on payment. Sometimes, when I'm mad at myself, I count up how much money I've been promised over the years and compare it to how much money I've actually earned. Most of the time however, I'm not that cruel.
Anyway, that's the story behind this piece. I hope you enjoy it. If you have Facebook, I think you'll understand. Hopefully you'll greet this unloved little article with (to paraphrase a wonderful Charlie Chaplin movie) "a smile - and perhaps, a tear".
Archetype (n) ‘original model; typical specimen’ – Taken from the Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus.
Facebook – ‘Online social networking service headquartered in Menlo Park, California’ – Taken from Wikipedia.org.
Ah, Facebook. Where would modern life be without it? If Facebook were a physical place, it would surely be the weirdest party ever held. Old friends from primary school, work colleagues, estranged relatives and coursemates from your uni days would rub shoulders with people cosplaying as fictional characters, friends of friends and/or famous celebrities you admire, but don’t actually know personally.
Still, for all its obvious incongruity, Facebook is an unparalleled success. According to recent statistics, some 1.3 billion users check their page a month, with an estimated 829 million people hitting the page every single day. Amazingly, Facebook friend connections exceeded the 150 billion mark last year, with no signs of slowing down at the time of writing. Still, as much as it probably does qualify as a wonder of the modern world, navigating Facebook can sometimes be a bloody minefield.
Maybe Bill Hicks was right, maybe we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Maybe that consciousness’ name is Facebook. If so, then perhaps we can broadly apply a Jungian ethic to the study of Facebook (bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this...).
Basically, the psychologist Carl Jung posited that within mankind’s collective unconscious are repeated patterns and images that are recycled endlessly in our artworks, stories and generally across the world. Within this theory, he identified numerous archetypal figures that show up repeatedly in the mythology of most cultures.
If Facebook now represents our virtual consciousness, maybe it would be funny to look at the repeated figures found on Facebook and name the 10 most irritating of them. Why? Because its Thursday afternoon and I’m tired, that’s why.
Ready? Here goes...
10. The Mother
“Just signed up to this. Not sure how it works yet, but it’ll be a good way for us to keep in touch!”
In all probability, your mother has not signed up on Facebook to catch up with old friends, share disinformation or post drunken selfies on Friday nights. No, your mother has signed up on Facebook to spy on you, plain and simple.
Your door may be locked; your diary may be safely tucked away under your suspiciously dust-free porn stash and your phone may be password protected, but your Facebook page is now completely annexed.
I mean, what are you going to do, deny a friend request from your own mum?
If you’re at University and you post a status like this,
“Just got double teamed in the club carpark by two guys dressed as the 118 men. Wooooo!”
Your mother is going to see it.
She is then going to subject you to a very public b*llocking (with status tagging replacing traditional finger wagging), for the amusement of everyone you’ve ever met in your entire life.
Cheers, mum. An angry phone call would’ve sufficed...
If you’re using Facebook to try and meet available members of the opposite sex (don’t be ashamed, we’ve all done it), be afraid, because now that your mum has Facebook and has figured out how the home scanner works, she’ll be sharing your baby photos and embarrassing childhood pics with everyone, be they interested or not. This means that work colleagues, coursemates, ex lovers and people you barely even know can now all see the picture of the time you peed your pants during Christmas dinner. Great.
Once your mum is on Facebook, it’s like having your own personal ‘pocket mum’ to take around with you everywhere. Fancy a cold drink and a sit down? Not until your chores are done. Feel like eating a whole block of marzipan at 2.00AM? Not going to happen. Snapshot of the dinner you just cooked? Where are all the vegetables?
And so on...
They say that our generation is leaving home later than ever before. Now, at last we can see why. With everyone’s mum now on Facebook, there’s no f*cking point...
9. The Political Activist
“Please, give just £2 a month. I’m trying to get laid here...”
The political activist is somebody who is looking to save the world, one flame war at a time.
Now, social media can be used to accomplish great things in terms of social change (just look at how it helped the Awa people of the Amazon rainforest recently), but it definitely has its limits. Sadly, there are a lot of problems in this world and the ugly truth is that not all of them can be solved by Facebook.
The political Activist is the sort of Facebook user that will adopt a trendy cause without doing any research whatsoever on the subject.
“Sign this petition to end the war against gay marriage in Iraq by 9/11” and so on...
Inevitably, an argument occurs (see also: The Flame-Warrior) about whether or not the cause is just (there is always at least one flagrant b@stard who wants to see all the libraries closed, public land become privatised and puppies be skinned alive and blended into a puree in order to feed and clothe the homeless). When that happens, take cover. It’s going to get ugly.
Facebook Activists believe that they are making the world a better place (and sometimes, they are), but by spamming causes like it’s a bodily function, people simply become immune to them. After a while, it just becomes a daily broadcast on how effed up the world is – and nobody needs that first thing in the morning.
Posting pictures of massacred people on our Facebook newsfeed is just depressing. After all, it isn’t like you can tag them...
8. The Food Freak
“Did you know that cheeseburgers are actually made up out of ground up war orphans? YUCK!”
Technically a sub-type of Political Activist, The Food Freak is the type of person that thinks the movie Chicken Run was a documentary.
According to a Facebook Food Freak, not getting your five-a-day is worse than being a Catholic and w@nking into the communion wine. To a Food Freak, it is important to expose the secrets of the food we all eat, in order that people, y’know, stop eating it.
The problem is, that these people know nothing about food, at all. Like the ‘Not-A-Racist, But’ archetypes, this type revel in their own ignorance. They’ll share pictures telling us that bread is made from Human hair, or that kebab meat is made from mashed up criminals (actually, the jury’s still out on that one...) and expect us to believe it all wholesale, without any actual proof.
Many Food Freaks are also militant vegetarians, which apparently involves trying to convince everybody who isn’t a vegetarian that they are some sort of bloodthirsty, heartless, murdering bastard.
“Did you know that KFC chickens are actually genetically modified so that they now have souls?”
Huh. Are they still delicious by any chance?
Animals should be treated better, that is a fact. Vegetarians should be respected, that is also a fact. Bacon is yummy, that is the third, and final fact.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to campaign for improved animal rights than to try and stop a carnivorous species from ever eating meat again? Just a thought.
Besides, we already know that double cheese meat feast pizzas are bad for us. We’re only eating them because we know that if we do die from a massive coronary, we won’t have to read any more of your statuses about how unhealthy we all f*cking are.
7. The Vomiteers
“Look at my gal, isn’t she the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“Aww, thanks hun, you’re so sweet!”
“No, you’re so sweet!”
“Nooo, you’re so sweet!”
Excuse me; I’m off to get a bucket...
The Vomiteers are a couple. They are very much in love and they are apparently unable to keep that fact to themselves.
Apparently, there is a certain type of couple that, via some extremely specific strain of shared amnesia, completely forgets that Facebook has a ‘Private Message’ function once they enter into a relationship.
The problem is, that after a few days of their relentless swooning and sighing, diabetes becomes a serious risk to anyone that reads their statuses.
BOYFRIEND Changed His Cover Photo. Awww.
GIRLFRIEND Changed Her Cover Photo. Awww.
BOYFRIEND Uploaded 37,000 Photos To The Album ‘I Love My Girlfriend’. Euch.
The Vomiteers want to share every facet of their newfound happiness with everyone on Facebook. They want you to know that, at long last, they have found somebody who loves them and whom they can love in return. It would actually be nice, if it wasn’t so f*cking nauseating...
This type of Facebooker cares not if his/her friends are single, recently divorced, lonely or miserable. They just want to make sure that we know that they are having regular sex with an honest-to-goodness-person.
The one good thing about this type of couple, however, is that they rarely, if ever, last. You won’t be virtually attending their Facebook wedding anytime soon. Y’see, couples like this are actually far too interested in convincing everybody they know that they are in love. This is a surefire sign that they are unconvinced of their own feelings. It is simply over-compensating, nothing more...
The inevitable break-up will not usually be anything like as public, which is a shame really, as it means that we don’t get to follow the story to its logical conclusion. When questioned, your heartbroken pal will say that they ‘don’t want to talk about it’. Hurm. Where was that noble, sensitive discretion when they were plastering their innermost thoughts and feelings all over the net last month?
Still, it can be annoying to watch the rejected singletons move on with new lovers and embark on the same process again, this time one-upping each other in the PDA stakes and offering you twice as much woe as before.
Eventually, it feels like you’re trapped in an endlessly repeating episode of Hollyoaks, which is its own special kind of hell...
6. The Selfie-Star
“I just gave birth! How’s my hair?”
As the name suggests, the selfie-star (or starlet) is the sort of vacuous, self obsessed airhead that genuinely believes that our lives are improved simply by seeing that they’re having a really good hair day.
No event is sacred to these people. They will post pictures of themselves choking on food (a real example), being pulled over by police (a real example) and taking a dump (depressingly, this is also a real example).
Of course, everybody takes the occasional photo of themselves, maybe before a night out, or possibly whilst wearing one of those silly hats at a graduation, but The Selfie Star doesn’t stop there. The Selfie Star is so hopelessly in love with him/herself, that they will photograph themselves preening in public restrooms, posing in the bowels of tacky nightclubs and unconsciously laying in vomit-strewn gutters at the end of the night.
They rarely, if ever, deign to give a crap about the world around them, or the other people in it, which is why so many bathroom selfies feature people in the background standing at urinals and looking pretty annoyed. They didn’t mean it; they just couldn’t see them over the sight of their own meticulously crafted hair-dos.
Nice going, duckface.
5. The-Not-A-Racist, But...
“They come over ‘ere, stealing our jobs...”
Of course, most of us are not friends with practicing racists. That crap went out with burning witches and not believing in evolution, right?
Still, having said that, there are an alarming number of people who claim not to be racists, but still post the worst kind of quasi-racist claptrap all over Facebook. Especially shared photos that claim to offer statistics like,
“Did you know, 99.99% of immigrants are fully paid up members of terrorist groups and they all know how to make bombs and sh!t?”
Or,
“Did you know, in 2011, the UK Government signed off on the ‘Import a paedophile act’ – as a result, there are now over 10 billion child molesters with funny sounding foreign accents hiding under your child’s bed at any given moment?”.
Another favourite is the ‘un-reported’ (gee, I wonder why?) news story of Mr & Mrs Al-Quaeda, who allegedly moved into Buckingham Palace, summarily booted out the Queen (and all her aids) and then burned all the British flags in the London area before heading over to the Job Centre to topple the economy by claiming £49.7 Billion a second in benefits for each of their 136 kids, all of whom are involved in knife crime and drug dealing of some sort...
I mean, by clicking ‘share’ on that, you really aren’t helping the cause of world peace, are you?
In addition, if you actually look up the statistics being shared from proper sources (not the website that originally hosted the image, for example), you will invariably learn that not a single one of them has ever turned out to be true. In fact, stories like this are no different to the tales told about the incestuous French during the Napoleonic wars, or the baby-eating Germans during the First World War. It was BS then and its BS now.
If you challenge these statistics, the ‘Not-A-Racist, But’ who is sharing the comment will almost always reply with either a demented rant about their Pakistani newsagent giving them a copy of the Daily Mail without the free CD, or else call you ‘brainwashed’. The brainwashing argument is an especially good one, as it requires absolutely no research or proof on their part, so they don’t have to do anything at all to defend it.
Riiight, we’re the ones who’ve been brainwashed...Yeah, because that makes sense. Obviously, it’s a global conspiracy and only you and that aging skinhead that spends all day in the pub are in on it.
If you’re lucky enough to have a majority of intelligent, forward thinking friends on your newsfeed, this user will soon become aware that they are as out of place as Nick Griffin on a night out in Nando’s...
4. The Religious Zealot
“I’ve found God! Turns out, he was under the fridge all along! Have you found him yet? Here, I’ll help you look...”
In times gone by, if you were unhappy about the book someone venerated or the deity they preyed to, you had to go through the whole palaver of slapping on a heavy suit of armour and buggering off to some unfathomably hot pagan hellhole in order to do something about it. A decade or so later, you’d come back reeking of sweat, blood and syphilis and wondering what it was all for.
Thank God for Facebook.
On Facebook, you can annoy atheists or people of other faiths by blathering on endlessly about your own religion. Its great - you don’t even need to stab them in the neck with a broadsword (although, to be fair, they might actually ask you to eventually).
The worst example of Facebook zealotry usually concerns someone that suddenly decides to become religious (often following a breakup, sacking or personal tragedy) and then posts about 45,000 statuses a day on the subject.
“Since I embraced Christ as my saviour, I’ve been able to defrost the fridge. Praise Jesus!”
Like people who quit smoking and then spend all their time admonishing their smoker friends, they are annoying in the extreme.
There’s nothing at all wrong with being religious, of course, but religious Facebookers often take it just that one step (and by ‘one step’, read ‘round-the-world trek’) too far.
Statuses like “I just want to thank God for this beautiful day” are fine. Friends will even put up with the odd Bible/Koran quote, but when they start banging on about the world being f*cked up because not enough people follow their particular religion, it all gets a bit much.
‘Y’see, if all people were exactly the same and believed what I believe, there wouldn’t be any problems in the world!’ Uh huh. People who say that are actually much closer to the worldview of Hitler than they are to Christ, Muhammad or anyone else, for that matter.
Besides, if you’ve got such a direct line to your creator, why not blame the all-powerful force for the state of the world, rather than us little people who are pretty much powerless to do anything about it?
3. The Flame-Warrior
“Allow me to offer a rebuttal, you blithering idiot”
The Flame-Warrior suffers from an astonishing lack of social skills, which is probably why he (or she) spends most of his (or her) time online. Real life offers them nothing but frustration, as they have all the charm and personality of a used sanitary towel (and, as a result, are only marginally more welcome at a party).
Because their lives are so dull and empty, they take out their frustrations on other Facebook users, taking any excuse to start a cyber fight.
A person might post a status saying ‘I like Marvel’s movies better than the DC ones’ or ‘I think Apple products are better than Microsoft’ and, that tiny little opinion is all it takes to light a flame that can burn for days.
The Flame-Warrior’s superpower, then, would appear to be the ability to start a fight, at any time, over any subject, whether they are emotionally invested in it or not.
In addition, rather than offer a counterpoint to an opinion, say, something in the ballpark of “I prefer DC movies personally” or, “I’m using Windows 8 and I’m loving it”, they will, without fail, open their salvo with a personal insult.
Generally, they always begin their ‘critique’ of someone else’s opinion by suggesting that the author of the original comment is stupid, ignorant and exhibits a less-than-acceptable standard of personal hygiene. The targeted person will then react to this flagrant disrespect and the resulting fracas will act like quicksand and suck in the nearest users (in particular, The Fence Straddler), all of which feeds The Flame-Warrior further and fuels their worthless lives a little longer.
2. The Fence-Straddler
“Stop fighting! Can’t we all just agree to disagree!?”
Unintentionally the most annoying archetype on this list, the Fence-Straddler has just one goal in life; to make peace.
With everyone.
In the entire world.
...Whether they want to or not.
Admittedly, it’s a strangely militaristic way of obtaining peace, but that’s the way they seem to like it. The Fence-Straddler has no strong opinions of his/her own about anyone or anything and presumably they can only experience conflict vicariously as a result.
Its as if they have, to quote Zap Brannigan “a heart full of neutrality”.
When you’re stuck in a flame war situation (see also: The Troll and The Flame-Warrior), the Fence-Straddler is always there. They seem to spend countless hours scouring their newsfeeds in search of a nice, juicy argument. When they find one, they pounce with cat-like precision and join in, but they never, ever take a side.
You could be arguing in favour of Gandhi’s methods over Hitler’s and still they will remain neutral, perched forevermore on the fence.
Now, making peace sounds like a neat objective, really - and, theoretically, it is. However, admiring such action only presupposes that the Fence Straddler knows how to mediate a dispute, which they invariably don’t. Because of this, their entire effort is limited to flustered cries of “can’t we all just get along!?”
No. Apparently we can’t. You really should have learned that by now.
The Government really needs to parachute this person into war-torn areas of the world so that they can preach their harmonious message there...And get shot. Several times. For the good of Facebook users everywhere.
1. The Troll
“Your comment was so laughable that I didn’t even read it! HaHa!”
You aren’t actually friends with The Troll. But you have friends that are. The Troll doesn’t have any genuine opinions on anything, he/she just wants to upset you and make you mad. Quite why they do this (or why they have any friends at all) is anybody’s guess.
If you look attractive in your profile picture, The Troll will call you ugly. If you are female, The Troll will take the form of a male misogynist. If you are male, The Troll will insult your clothes or hair and patiently explain that no woman will ever love you. If you engage The Troll in conversation, The Troll will simply hurl insults and abuse at whatever you say. It will use whatever you say against you and will not let up until it has been destroyed (read: Blocked).
Aside from occasionally selling anti-wrinkle cream or links to dodgy porn sites, Trolls have no purpose whatsoever. Unlike Flame-Warriors, they have no particular axe to grind and unlike Political Activists, they have no great cause to serve. It’s as if Facebook trolls are demonic entities that have possessed formerly pleasant, productive members of society and turned them into foul-mouthed Internet Visigoths who’s only function in life is to torment friends of their friends on Facebook.
I need an existing account and a new account. The power of Zuckerberg compels you!
THE POWER OF ZUCKERBERG COMPELS YOU!!!
You can usually tell a troll via a quick visit to their Facebook wall. Trolls have very few friends and their wall is usually pretty Spartan and threadbare. They have only recently joined Facebook, but this is only because their 500 other accounts have all been taken down. In addition, their name is usually an obvious pseudonym. It isn’t a good idea to accept friend requests, or engage in conversation, for that matter, anyone, called Varth Dader, Penis McPussington, Shockhorror Biddleswitch or Gary Glitter. It just isn’t.
A troll will also occasionally hide his/her true nature from you. Beginning by actually starting a conversation (or, more often joining one), before ending up hurling abuse and vomiting green, corrosive slime everywhere (probably).
You cannot win an argument with a troll. In fact, all you can do is block them. Block them until they scream for mercy. Then block the b@stards again...If that doesn’t work, try to manipulate them into saying their own net handle backwards...
If only Facebook’s ‘Block’ function worked in real life. What a wonderful world this could be. Sigh.
Anyway, that's the story behind this piece. I hope you enjoy it. If you have Facebook, I think you'll understand. Hopefully you'll greet this unloved little article with (to paraphrase a wonderful Charlie Chaplin movie) "a smile - and perhaps, a tear".
Archetype (n) ‘original model; typical specimen’ – Taken from the Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus.
Facebook – ‘Online social networking service headquartered in Menlo Park, California’ – Taken from Wikipedia.org.
Ah, Facebook. Where would modern life be without it? If Facebook were a physical place, it would surely be the weirdest party ever held. Old friends from primary school, work colleagues, estranged relatives and coursemates from your uni days would rub shoulders with people cosplaying as fictional characters, friends of friends and/or famous celebrities you admire, but don’t actually know personally.
Still, for all its obvious incongruity, Facebook is an unparalleled success. According to recent statistics, some 1.3 billion users check their page a month, with an estimated 829 million people hitting the page every single day. Amazingly, Facebook friend connections exceeded the 150 billion mark last year, with no signs of slowing down at the time of writing. Still, as much as it probably does qualify as a wonder of the modern world, navigating Facebook can sometimes be a bloody minefield.
Maybe Bill Hicks was right, maybe we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Maybe that consciousness’ name is Facebook. If so, then perhaps we can broadly apply a Jungian ethic to the study of Facebook (bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this...).
Basically, the psychologist Carl Jung posited that within mankind’s collective unconscious are repeated patterns and images that are recycled endlessly in our artworks, stories and generally across the world. Within this theory, he identified numerous archetypal figures that show up repeatedly in the mythology of most cultures.
If Facebook now represents our virtual consciousness, maybe it would be funny to look at the repeated figures found on Facebook and name the 10 most irritating of them. Why? Because its Thursday afternoon and I’m tired, that’s why.
Ready? Here goes...
10. The Mother
“Just signed up to this. Not sure how it works yet, but it’ll be a good way for us to keep in touch!”
In all probability, your mother has not signed up on Facebook to catch up with old friends, share disinformation or post drunken selfies on Friday nights. No, your mother has signed up on Facebook to spy on you, plain and simple.
Your door may be locked; your diary may be safely tucked away under your suspiciously dust-free porn stash and your phone may be password protected, but your Facebook page is now completely annexed.
I mean, what are you going to do, deny a friend request from your own mum?
If you’re at University and you post a status like this,
“Just got double teamed in the club carpark by two guys dressed as the 118 men. Wooooo!”
Your mother is going to see it.
She is then going to subject you to a very public b*llocking (with status tagging replacing traditional finger wagging), for the amusement of everyone you’ve ever met in your entire life.
Cheers, mum. An angry phone call would’ve sufficed...
If you’re using Facebook to try and meet available members of the opposite sex (don’t be ashamed, we’ve all done it), be afraid, because now that your mum has Facebook and has figured out how the home scanner works, she’ll be sharing your baby photos and embarrassing childhood pics with everyone, be they interested or not. This means that work colleagues, coursemates, ex lovers and people you barely even know can now all see the picture of the time you peed your pants during Christmas dinner. Great.
Once your mum is on Facebook, it’s like having your own personal ‘pocket mum’ to take around with you everywhere. Fancy a cold drink and a sit down? Not until your chores are done. Feel like eating a whole block of marzipan at 2.00AM? Not going to happen. Snapshot of the dinner you just cooked? Where are all the vegetables?
And so on...
They say that our generation is leaving home later than ever before. Now, at last we can see why. With everyone’s mum now on Facebook, there’s no f*cking point...
9. The Political Activist
“Please, give just £2 a month. I’m trying to get laid here...”
The political activist is somebody who is looking to save the world, one flame war at a time.
Now, social media can be used to accomplish great things in terms of social change (just look at how it helped the Awa people of the Amazon rainforest recently), but it definitely has its limits. Sadly, there are a lot of problems in this world and the ugly truth is that not all of them can be solved by Facebook.
The political Activist is the sort of Facebook user that will adopt a trendy cause without doing any research whatsoever on the subject.
“Sign this petition to end the war against gay marriage in Iraq by 9/11” and so on...
Inevitably, an argument occurs (see also: The Flame-Warrior) about whether or not the cause is just (there is always at least one flagrant b@stard who wants to see all the libraries closed, public land become privatised and puppies be skinned alive and blended into a puree in order to feed and clothe the homeless). When that happens, take cover. It’s going to get ugly.
Facebook Activists believe that they are making the world a better place (and sometimes, they are), but by spamming causes like it’s a bodily function, people simply become immune to them. After a while, it just becomes a daily broadcast on how effed up the world is – and nobody needs that first thing in the morning.
Posting pictures of massacred people on our Facebook newsfeed is just depressing. After all, it isn’t like you can tag them...
8. The Food Freak
“Did you know that cheeseburgers are actually made up out of ground up war orphans? YUCK!”
Technically a sub-type of Political Activist, The Food Freak is the type of person that thinks the movie Chicken Run was a documentary.
According to a Facebook Food Freak, not getting your five-a-day is worse than being a Catholic and w@nking into the communion wine. To a Food Freak, it is important to expose the secrets of the food we all eat, in order that people, y’know, stop eating it.
The problem is, that these people know nothing about food, at all. Like the ‘Not-A-Racist, But’ archetypes, this type revel in their own ignorance. They’ll share pictures telling us that bread is made from Human hair, or that kebab meat is made from mashed up criminals (actually, the jury’s still out on that one...) and expect us to believe it all wholesale, without any actual proof.
Many Food Freaks are also militant vegetarians, which apparently involves trying to convince everybody who isn’t a vegetarian that they are some sort of bloodthirsty, heartless, murdering bastard.
“Did you know that KFC chickens are actually genetically modified so that they now have souls?”
Huh. Are they still delicious by any chance?
Animals should be treated better, that is a fact. Vegetarians should be respected, that is also a fact. Bacon is yummy, that is the third, and final fact.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to campaign for improved animal rights than to try and stop a carnivorous species from ever eating meat again? Just a thought.
Besides, we already know that double cheese meat feast pizzas are bad for us. We’re only eating them because we know that if we do die from a massive coronary, we won’t have to read any more of your statuses about how unhealthy we all f*cking are.
7. The Vomiteers
“Look at my gal, isn’t she the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“Aww, thanks hun, you’re so sweet!”
“No, you’re so sweet!”
“Nooo, you’re so sweet!”
Excuse me; I’m off to get a bucket...
The Vomiteers are a couple. They are very much in love and they are apparently unable to keep that fact to themselves.
Apparently, there is a certain type of couple that, via some extremely specific strain of shared amnesia, completely forgets that Facebook has a ‘Private Message’ function once they enter into a relationship.
The problem is, that after a few days of their relentless swooning and sighing, diabetes becomes a serious risk to anyone that reads their statuses.
BOYFRIEND Changed His Cover Photo. Awww.
GIRLFRIEND Changed Her Cover Photo. Awww.
BOYFRIEND Uploaded 37,000 Photos To The Album ‘I Love My Girlfriend’. Euch.
The Vomiteers want to share every facet of their newfound happiness with everyone on Facebook. They want you to know that, at long last, they have found somebody who loves them and whom they can love in return. It would actually be nice, if it wasn’t so f*cking nauseating...
This type of Facebooker cares not if his/her friends are single, recently divorced, lonely or miserable. They just want to make sure that we know that they are having regular sex with an honest-to-goodness-person.
The one good thing about this type of couple, however, is that they rarely, if ever, last. You won’t be virtually attending their Facebook wedding anytime soon. Y’see, couples like this are actually far too interested in convincing everybody they know that they are in love. This is a surefire sign that they are unconvinced of their own feelings. It is simply over-compensating, nothing more...
The inevitable break-up will not usually be anything like as public, which is a shame really, as it means that we don’t get to follow the story to its logical conclusion. When questioned, your heartbroken pal will say that they ‘don’t want to talk about it’. Hurm. Where was that noble, sensitive discretion when they were plastering their innermost thoughts and feelings all over the net last month?
Still, it can be annoying to watch the rejected singletons move on with new lovers and embark on the same process again, this time one-upping each other in the PDA stakes and offering you twice as much woe as before.
Eventually, it feels like you’re trapped in an endlessly repeating episode of Hollyoaks, which is its own special kind of hell...
6. The Selfie-Star
“I just gave birth! How’s my hair?”
As the name suggests, the selfie-star (or starlet) is the sort of vacuous, self obsessed airhead that genuinely believes that our lives are improved simply by seeing that they’re having a really good hair day.
No event is sacred to these people. They will post pictures of themselves choking on food (a real example), being pulled over by police (a real example) and taking a dump (depressingly, this is also a real example).
Of course, everybody takes the occasional photo of themselves, maybe before a night out, or possibly whilst wearing one of those silly hats at a graduation, but The Selfie Star doesn’t stop there. The Selfie Star is so hopelessly in love with him/herself, that they will photograph themselves preening in public restrooms, posing in the bowels of tacky nightclubs and unconsciously laying in vomit-strewn gutters at the end of the night.
They rarely, if ever, deign to give a crap about the world around them, or the other people in it, which is why so many bathroom selfies feature people in the background standing at urinals and looking pretty annoyed. They didn’t mean it; they just couldn’t see them over the sight of their own meticulously crafted hair-dos.
Nice going, duckface.
5. The-Not-A-Racist, But...
“They come over ‘ere, stealing our jobs...”
Of course, most of us are not friends with practicing racists. That crap went out with burning witches and not believing in evolution, right?
Still, having said that, there are an alarming number of people who claim not to be racists, but still post the worst kind of quasi-racist claptrap all over Facebook. Especially shared photos that claim to offer statistics like,
“Did you know, 99.99% of immigrants are fully paid up members of terrorist groups and they all know how to make bombs and sh!t?”
Or,
“Did you know, in 2011, the UK Government signed off on the ‘Import a paedophile act’ – as a result, there are now over 10 billion child molesters with funny sounding foreign accents hiding under your child’s bed at any given moment?”.
Another favourite is the ‘un-reported’ (gee, I wonder why?) news story of Mr & Mrs Al-Quaeda, who allegedly moved into Buckingham Palace, summarily booted out the Queen (and all her aids) and then burned all the British flags in the London area before heading over to the Job Centre to topple the economy by claiming £49.7 Billion a second in benefits for each of their 136 kids, all of whom are involved in knife crime and drug dealing of some sort...
I mean, by clicking ‘share’ on that, you really aren’t helping the cause of world peace, are you?
In addition, if you actually look up the statistics being shared from proper sources (not the website that originally hosted the image, for example), you will invariably learn that not a single one of them has ever turned out to be true. In fact, stories like this are no different to the tales told about the incestuous French during the Napoleonic wars, or the baby-eating Germans during the First World War. It was BS then and its BS now.
If you challenge these statistics, the ‘Not-A-Racist, But’ who is sharing the comment will almost always reply with either a demented rant about their Pakistani newsagent giving them a copy of the Daily Mail without the free CD, or else call you ‘brainwashed’. The brainwashing argument is an especially good one, as it requires absolutely no research or proof on their part, so they don’t have to do anything at all to defend it.
Riiight, we’re the ones who’ve been brainwashed...Yeah, because that makes sense. Obviously, it’s a global conspiracy and only you and that aging skinhead that spends all day in the pub are in on it.
If you’re lucky enough to have a majority of intelligent, forward thinking friends on your newsfeed, this user will soon become aware that they are as out of place as Nick Griffin on a night out in Nando’s...
4. The Religious Zealot
“I’ve found God! Turns out, he was under the fridge all along! Have you found him yet? Here, I’ll help you look...”
In times gone by, if you were unhappy about the book someone venerated or the deity they preyed to, you had to go through the whole palaver of slapping on a heavy suit of armour and buggering off to some unfathomably hot pagan hellhole in order to do something about it. A decade or so later, you’d come back reeking of sweat, blood and syphilis and wondering what it was all for.
Thank God for Facebook.
On Facebook, you can annoy atheists or people of other faiths by blathering on endlessly about your own religion. Its great - you don’t even need to stab them in the neck with a broadsword (although, to be fair, they might actually ask you to eventually).
The worst example of Facebook zealotry usually concerns someone that suddenly decides to become religious (often following a breakup, sacking or personal tragedy) and then posts about 45,000 statuses a day on the subject.
“Since I embraced Christ as my saviour, I’ve been able to defrost the fridge. Praise Jesus!”
Like people who quit smoking and then spend all their time admonishing their smoker friends, they are annoying in the extreme.
There’s nothing at all wrong with being religious, of course, but religious Facebookers often take it just that one step (and by ‘one step’, read ‘round-the-world trek’) too far.
Statuses like “I just want to thank God for this beautiful day” are fine. Friends will even put up with the odd Bible/Koran quote, but when they start banging on about the world being f*cked up because not enough people follow their particular religion, it all gets a bit much.
‘Y’see, if all people were exactly the same and believed what I believe, there wouldn’t be any problems in the world!’ Uh huh. People who say that are actually much closer to the worldview of Hitler than they are to Christ, Muhammad or anyone else, for that matter.
Besides, if you’ve got such a direct line to your creator, why not blame the all-powerful force for the state of the world, rather than us little people who are pretty much powerless to do anything about it?
3. The Flame-Warrior
“Allow me to offer a rebuttal, you blithering idiot”
The Flame-Warrior suffers from an astonishing lack of social skills, which is probably why he (or she) spends most of his (or her) time online. Real life offers them nothing but frustration, as they have all the charm and personality of a used sanitary towel (and, as a result, are only marginally more welcome at a party).
Because their lives are so dull and empty, they take out their frustrations on other Facebook users, taking any excuse to start a cyber fight.
A person might post a status saying ‘I like Marvel’s movies better than the DC ones’ or ‘I think Apple products are better than Microsoft’ and, that tiny little opinion is all it takes to light a flame that can burn for days.
The Flame-Warrior’s superpower, then, would appear to be the ability to start a fight, at any time, over any subject, whether they are emotionally invested in it or not.
In addition, rather than offer a counterpoint to an opinion, say, something in the ballpark of “I prefer DC movies personally” or, “I’m using Windows 8 and I’m loving it”, they will, without fail, open their salvo with a personal insult.
Generally, they always begin their ‘critique’ of someone else’s opinion by suggesting that the author of the original comment is stupid, ignorant and exhibits a less-than-acceptable standard of personal hygiene. The targeted person will then react to this flagrant disrespect and the resulting fracas will act like quicksand and suck in the nearest users (in particular, The Fence Straddler), all of which feeds The Flame-Warrior further and fuels their worthless lives a little longer.
2. The Fence-Straddler
“Stop fighting! Can’t we all just agree to disagree!?”
Unintentionally the most annoying archetype on this list, the Fence-Straddler has just one goal in life; to make peace.
With everyone.
In the entire world.
...Whether they want to or not.
Admittedly, it’s a strangely militaristic way of obtaining peace, but that’s the way they seem to like it. The Fence-Straddler has no strong opinions of his/her own about anyone or anything and presumably they can only experience conflict vicariously as a result.
Its as if they have, to quote Zap Brannigan “a heart full of neutrality”.
When you’re stuck in a flame war situation (see also: The Troll and The Flame-Warrior), the Fence-Straddler is always there. They seem to spend countless hours scouring their newsfeeds in search of a nice, juicy argument. When they find one, they pounce with cat-like precision and join in, but they never, ever take a side.
You could be arguing in favour of Gandhi’s methods over Hitler’s and still they will remain neutral, perched forevermore on the fence.
Now, making peace sounds like a neat objective, really - and, theoretically, it is. However, admiring such action only presupposes that the Fence Straddler knows how to mediate a dispute, which they invariably don’t. Because of this, their entire effort is limited to flustered cries of “can’t we all just get along!?”
No. Apparently we can’t. You really should have learned that by now.
The Government really needs to parachute this person into war-torn areas of the world so that they can preach their harmonious message there...And get shot. Several times. For the good of Facebook users everywhere.
1. The Troll
“Your comment was so laughable that I didn’t even read it! HaHa!”
You aren’t actually friends with The Troll. But you have friends that are. The Troll doesn’t have any genuine opinions on anything, he/she just wants to upset you and make you mad. Quite why they do this (or why they have any friends at all) is anybody’s guess.
If you look attractive in your profile picture, The Troll will call you ugly. If you are female, The Troll will take the form of a male misogynist. If you are male, The Troll will insult your clothes or hair and patiently explain that no woman will ever love you. If you engage The Troll in conversation, The Troll will simply hurl insults and abuse at whatever you say. It will use whatever you say against you and will not let up until it has been destroyed (read: Blocked).
Aside from occasionally selling anti-wrinkle cream or links to dodgy porn sites, Trolls have no purpose whatsoever. Unlike Flame-Warriors, they have no particular axe to grind and unlike Political Activists, they have no great cause to serve. It’s as if Facebook trolls are demonic entities that have possessed formerly pleasant, productive members of society and turned them into foul-mouthed Internet Visigoths who’s only function in life is to torment friends of their friends on Facebook.
I need an existing account and a new account. The power of Zuckerberg compels you!
THE POWER OF ZUCKERBERG COMPELS YOU!!!
You can usually tell a troll via a quick visit to their Facebook wall. Trolls have very few friends and their wall is usually pretty Spartan and threadbare. They have only recently joined Facebook, but this is only because their 500 other accounts have all been taken down. In addition, their name is usually an obvious pseudonym. It isn’t a good idea to accept friend requests, or engage in conversation, for that matter, anyone, called Varth Dader, Penis McPussington, Shockhorror Biddleswitch or Gary Glitter. It just isn’t.
A troll will also occasionally hide his/her true nature from you. Beginning by actually starting a conversation (or, more often joining one), before ending up hurling abuse and vomiting green, corrosive slime everywhere (probably).
You cannot win an argument with a troll. In fact, all you can do is block them. Block them until they scream for mercy. Then block the b@stards again...If that doesn’t work, try to manipulate them into saying their own net handle backwards...
If only Facebook’s ‘Block’ function worked in real life. What a wonderful world this could be. Sigh.