Humans are social creatures. In the "days of old," from what I've been told, people spoke over wired telephones with those pain-in-the-ass "stretchy" coils to organize actual things to do to scratch this social itch. In the 21st century, we'd be embarrassed to be this primitive. We prefer to communicate in small, grammatically dismal, and ultimately pointless blurbs over sites called Facebook and Twitter that politely ask us what's "on our mind" and make us feel wanted. That doesn't mean we take the time to respond to other people's thoughts with actual words -- we have advanced to "Like" and "Retweet" buttons that give us the kind of lazy gratification we always fantasized about as children -- but we damn well hope that someone will Like our words, or else we might just defriend them.
This has produced a lot of noxious consequences -- no one can spell anymore, for one -- but there is one monster that the Facebook juggernaut has given rise to that is easily the most hideous threat the world has seen since nuclear proliferation. I hope you all have seen this before, or else the soulless beast that is this Facebook meme might just make you fall out of your chair and give you nightmares. I don't want to be responsible for your nightmares.
It looks something like this:
Just copying and pasting it gives me shivers.
Like my status and I'll tell you my first impression of you, what I like and dislike about you, and my confession to you
Just copying and pasting it gives me shivers.
Now, granted, to protect you from neurological damage, I'm prettying it up a little bit. That's the best grammar with which I've seen this meme represented. Most of the time, it looks more like
[LiKe] this n ill tell u my 1st impression of u, what I LiKe and DiSlIkE about u, n a confession!!!!! lol!That's a sight to be mourned.
Now, granted, before the answers actually come in, this meme has appreciable potential. The idea of millions of hormonal, pubescent Facebook teenagers making huge amounts of drama by daring to say that they dislike someone else's outfits or (gasp!) disapprove of someone's boyfriend or girlfriend is a gratifying concept and a very pleasant mental image. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that way. It's bad enough that we're exposed to this on a regular basis; it becomes even worse when we're deprived of any potential entertainment value it had to begin with.
Instead, we are provided with hundreds of asinine, formulaic answers in our news feed, burying everything else and multiplying daily. Apparently, at some point, "we don't talk to each other much :(" became the only thing that anyone dislikes about any other human being -- if that were actually true, no one would fight wars and MTV would not have enough trashy drama in the world to fill a 24-hour schedule. Clearly, someone is lying.
Is a little debauchery and depravity too much to ask for? I'd pay just to see a couple responses where the first impression is "damn, hope that guy doesn't try to talk to me... oh crap," the dislike is something entertaining like "you look like a deer and you always smell like Wheatabix," and the confession is something like, "I saw you running on the side of the road once while I was driving. I was gonna run you over but my mom was in the passenger seat and I knew she wouldn't vouch for me in court so I didn't."
This Facebook meme is the pinnacle of all that is wrong with the world. It's brainless and it isn't even entertaining. I want a new Facebook meme. I want "Like this and I'll post a video of myself pissing on your house" or "Comment on this and I'll tell you how many times your girlfriend has cheated on you." Now that's what I call social networking.
