On the same night that last week’s issue of The Lawrentian was published, I ventured to the VR in order to make the unbearable anguish of living go away. Once my thirst had been quenched and the last remnants of the memories of last week’s sorrows and humiliations had been replaced by the simple pleasures of alcohol, I climbed the half dozen stairs to the exit at the back of the Union. As I was making my jolly way, a short beardy-faced guy stopped me.
“I have a bone to pick with you.”
Sensing a fight brewing, I moved into my attack stance – a variation of the fetal position – but was pleasantly surprised to find out that he simply wanted to criticize something I had written in my last article, namely that English is a useless major.
According to him, six out of 10 people accepted into medical school are English majors.
Who knew?
I wasn’t entirely sure who this guy was, but I thought he was in one of my classes and I gave him a knowing smile, only to find out that he wasn’t the guy I had encountered, but Timothy Phelan, the cuddliest leftist on campus and not an English major.
There are too many guys with beards on campus to separate one from the other, but after five minutes of narrowing down search terms on Facebook, I finally found my confronter. This leads me to the crux of this article: Facebook and its abusers.
As one can see from this anecdote, Facebook is the most awesome social utility online. Need to find an English major with a beard whose face you barely remember? Facebook will find him. Have a friend with a hot sibling that you want to see more of? Just friend the sibling and you’ll have hundreds of pictures at your fingertips.
Unfortunately, there is a dark underbelly to Facebook that pushes it toward the ever-present brink of reaching MySpace levels of lame. For every cool feature Facebook has, there’s someone trying to eff it up with their profoundly tedious misuse of the feature.
The Facebook note was a brilliant idea. For the first time, one could share one’s thoughts without having to use that douchey term “blogging.” This innovation was soon abused, however, by users who are under the impression that people want to read a 25 question survey that deals exclusively with the person answering it. Sample question: “do you have an attitude?” Sample answer: “lol sure.”
Are we that self-absorbed that we think our friends will be interested in a survey dealing with ourselves in which 90 percent of the answers consist of nothing but acronyms? The only thing more vile are the Facebook notes in which people write about how much they love their friends. I’d say I genuinely like two-thirds of the friends that I have, but I’m not so insecure in our friendship that I feel the need to expound upon how much I admire them.
Facebook group membership is the easiest way to judge a person. If I meet someone and he/she belongs to more than fifty Facebook groups, I know I’m not going to like this person. The same goes for anyone who joins a group that falls into one of the following categories: “The Facebook Experiment – Let’s Set a Guinness Record By Creating the World’s Largest Group Because Guinness Totally Has a Facebook Group Category” or “Oh My God! Join This Group Protesting Facebook Becoming a Paysite Even Though There’s No Evidence Supporting To Suggest This Could Actually Happen” or “Sign This Petition Against the New Changes Facebook Made to its Layout Or Else We’re Going to Quit, Just Like We Did the Last Two Times Facebook Changed Its Layout.”
Such Facebook abusers prove just how unworthy our generation is. According to a recent national poll cited in the Spring 2007 Lawrence Today most 18- to 22-year-olds voted to name our generation “The Millenials,” which was favored over “Echo Boomers.” The fact that not only were we given the ability to name our own generation but also chose to go with the more self-centered Millenials (in spite of most of us having been born in the ’80s) rather than the more accurate Echo Boomers (children of baby boomers) only furthers the evidence that our generation is a bunch of whiny, egocentric brats. Except for me.