Face(Arse)Book.

Dear Face(Arse)Book users (these are different from regular Facebook users),

What is it with the pathetic status updates?  Seriously.

I have a friend who judges people by their facebook statusses.  He gives them three hits.  And on their fourth status of this kind: "So-And-So is sad
:(", "So-And-So is hot", "So-And-So is having spaghetti bolognaise for lunch", well, he just defriends them.  A mutual friend of ours lasted 3 days.  3 days and the fourth status update, and she was out.


I have a another friend, who we'll call Perm (and no, not because of his hair) who is currently using Facebook for attention.  These are his last three status updates:

• Perm had a really great Ironman 70.3 race.

Followed by (I swear) about three hours later:

• Perm had a 4uper Ironman 70.3 race.  (Didn't get the typing quite right iether, shame.)

And then, this morning, I saw this:

• Perm is really chuffed with his Ironman 70.3 result.

We get it, okay.  You did the Ironman 70.3.  You did well.  What would you like me to do?  Get down on bended knee and glorify your name?  He's the kind of guy that would throw a "While you're down there" in my direction.

But his last three updates aren't quite as bad as the people that deem it necessary to use deep philosophical quotes.

Take this one for example:

• So-And-So "Before you say anything about a person, ask yourself: Is it TRUE, is it NECESSARY, is it KIND?" - Martin Luther King Jr.

Okay.  Number one, dear heart, your status is grammatically incorrect.  But I suppose that is becoming a trend with the illiterate technological generation of today.  Let me, if you will, explain a rule or two.

When you start a sentence with a proper noun (that is what your name is), it generally needs to be followed by a verb (that is a doing or being word).

See, if I was updating my status in response to some of your updates, it would be grammatical incorrect for me to type the following:

• Panty Liner You are a cock.

You see, I am not a cock.  I am cocky, but I am not a cock.  So without that little old 'doing word', I am telling the wrong person that they're a cock.  Seldom do I actually tell myself I am a cock.  Seldom but not never.

But if I'd had any of the following updates, they would make sense:

• Panty Liner thinks you are a cock.
• Panty Liner , "You are a cock."
• Panty Liner: You are a cock.

And the second problem I have, Mr I-Am-So-Learned-That-I-Am-Actually-Able-To-Quote-Martin-Luther-King-Junior, with your status update is that it really is irrelevant.

I'm a gossiper, you see.  I sit with my friends and discuss other people's poor fashion sense, their shocking people skills and their oh-so-dire relationship problems etc. etc. etc. etc.  (And yes, I meant to put four 'etc.').  That's what chicks do.  They talk about people, in unkind ways using information that is passed from mouth to ear to mouth to pillow to ear to mouth to mouth to phone to phone to email to facebook.  It's probably untrue.  And it's probably not necessary to discuss these things in the greater scheme of things.  But it's still effing entertaining.  It's fun.  You non-gossipers, you should try.

So now that I've established that what I generally talk about is unkind, untrue and unnecessary, what, then is the point of asking myself all these questions?  I don't care Martin Luther King Jr told me to do that.  I'm still going to gossip.  Asking those questions would just be a waste of time.  End of story.

Besides which, is Facebook really the correct forum to attempt to change the nature of human interaction?

Really now.