To get the most out of today’s column, you’ll need an internet connection, because I’ve got some interactive fun for you this week. What I want you to do first is surf to your favourite website. Really. Go on – actually do it, don’t just read on and spoil the magic.
Now, be honest – are you on Facebook? If you’re not, skip on a paragraph or two. Otherwise, put your right hand in front of the monitor, fingers spread out and palm facing towards you. Yes? Okay, then stare at the gaps between your fingers, and move your hand very fast towards you, so that it slaps you in the face, as hard as possible. Do it a few times, just to get the feel of it. Are you with me yet, or would it be easier if I created a “First Up Against The Wall, Come The Revolution” group and invited you to it?
Here are the things that terrorism is responsible for bringing into my life – occasional worried phone calls from my mother. And that’s really about it. Here’s what Facebook users are responsible for bringing into my life – constant, unending badgering by others to join inane, curly-fingers-quotation-marks “political” groups about completely fuck all; page after page of pointless writing in the papers and on news sites covering “the power of the internet” as if email had never been invented; the dullest conversation I have ever, ever had, involving the latest Facebook meta-gossip; Madeleine sodding McCann; and probably worst of all, the four-in-a-million retards who haven’t joined Facebook, ostensibly as some ridiculous statement of personal integrity, but really because they can’t trust themselves not to start posting photos of their nipples, who delight in impressing their “alternative choice” upon me every waking hour of every day.
Woop-di-do. You discovered social networking. Here’s how you find out what my ‘Favourite Movies’ are if you’re a Facebook user – you become my friend. And I don’t mean you click on a strip of text and write something in a box about me having really nice eyes, or thinking you knew me from some club in north Wales. I mean you, you know, talk to me and get to know me and things. Don’t get the wrong end of the meme here – I’m just as up for buying into internet-based group masturbation as the next student. But unlike the rest of the Imperial ‘network’ on Facebook, I’ve managed to contain my burning desire to share my relationship status with half of South Kensington and some moron from New Jersey. People I don’t know aren’t listed as my friends; do you see the subtlety here? I don’t list my favourite music for my friends to see, because my friends already know what that is. That’s why they’re my friends. It’s like how when a burly gentlemen standing outside Tesco at midnight asks you if you’re on your own, you don’t say, “Why yes, I have no friends in the immediate area and am a little bit lost. Also, maybe you’d like to know my top three Orlando Bloom films?” Instead, you walk on, because hey! That’s kind of how society works.
I don’t care if you think it’s a good way to meet new people. So is serving a jail sentence for indecent exposure, but we don’t spend our lunch hours attempting that, do we? Nor do I care if you think it’s an upmarket version of MySpace – at least the people on MySpace knew they were geeks with a self-respect lobotomy. Facebook is MySpace, but with any shred of entertainment sucked dry, replaced with a blue-and-white colour scheme, and given a copy of The Sun to read. Honest to god, a cursory glimpse of my News Feed tells me that people I know – people I have been in the same room as – have joined a group for “Hot Chinese Girls”. Now, there are literally millions of ways to connect to other human beings on this planet. Religion. Politics. Being born in the eighties. But no, we’ve actually chosen to hook up with people who have a thing for Far Eastern women in tights. Awesome. One up for the next generation.
But you don’t care, and neither do I. Because frankly, if you’re on Facebook for seven hours a day, at least I know where to avoid you.
