Facebook Dopes

Scrolling through your Facebook feed is no different to strolling through a bar filled, to a large extent, with people whom you are not actually friends with. You have never been friends with these people, and you certainly aren’t interested in where they went on their holidays last year. For the most part, they are innocent characters to whom you feel no disdain; however, there are always a select few who provide the exception to the rule.

Nobody will deny that social media has made a positive impact to the online world, but it can never be forgiven for inflicting these f*ckers on us. The people who I am referring to are the ones who have always been dopes. You knew it from the first moment you met them, long before the advent of Web 2.0, and your opinion of them has never changed. Now, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, they have found another platform on which to irritate you.

They have several techniques of irritation, none more popular than the attention craving status update. You know the one, “I am so p*ssed off right now!!! Really don’t want to talk about it!!!” This is usually followed by a litany of responses (from other dopes) saying, “Oh Jenny love, is everything okay?” At which point, Jenny will contradict her status by openly talking about her problem at length. Some of her friends will even give the status a token ‘Like’, which is both ironic and hilarious.

When it comes to uploading photos, these people lose the run of themselves. How does one take a picture of the Eiffel Tower with their gammy Nokia camera phone, and deem it worthy to upload and share with their ‘friends’ on Facebook. If there are people posing in the photograph, it can possess certain value. However, when it is simply a still of the Eiffel Tower in poor lighting with no flash, nobody wants to see it. We are capable of typing ‘Eiffel Tower’ into Google Images.

The final technique of irritation, and possibly the worst, is the live status update. This usually occurs when something like The X Factor is on. The dopes will take over your feed every Saturday and Sunday night, posting updates such as “OMG!!! Louis will not like that!” and “Go Marcus!!!!” They will post several updates in a very short space of time, each more irritating than the last. Pay attention to the number exclamation marks they will use, these act as sharpeners to help get under your skin that little bit quicker.

The strange thing is that we have the option to block these users, or even unfriend them, but we don’t. We get a strange kick from reading their updates, and though they irritate us, we couldn’t live without them. If nothing else, they make for great banter with actual friends, “Did you see Jimmy’s latest status on Facebook?” “I did, what a dope.”

Rant away, dopes, we’re all listening.

Meeting Random Dopes

There are few things worse than randomly meeting somebody who was once an acquaintance, but no longer is. I am referring to the type of person who you were forced to interact with on a daily basis, i.e. school, college, work etc., but never really liked. Why must we stop and chat inanely with these people whenever we meet them? The feeling must be mutual, both parties would surely be happier to jog on their separate ways, hmmm…

I was walking out of a dental surgery last week when I spotted two people who fall into that category coming down the street. Thankfully, I am quite a stealthy operator and was able to swiftly reverse into the surgery just in time to watch them stroll by laughing at each other’s bad jokes. “Did you forget something, love?” said the lady at the desk. “No”, said I, “I’m just avoiding those two lads out on the street there”.

If it hadn’t been for my hawk-like peripheral vision, I would have been dragged into that conversation. You know what I’m referring to when I say that conversation.

-          (Me) Ah Tom, long time, no see. Anything strange?

-          (Tom) Barry! Long time, indeed. Nothing strange now, are you working?

-          (Me) Yeah, working in marketing. Are you still claiming, yeah?

-          (Tom) Yeah, man, no jobs out there, f*cking government.

-          (Me) Yeah.

-          (Tom) How’s the missus?

-          (Me) We broke up.

-          (Tom) Ah sh*t, man, when? Plenty more fish in the sea, wha?

-          (Me) Fish, sure. Come here Tom, I’m pretty busy so I bette…….

-          (Tom) Do you fancy having a pint some night to catch up and that?

-          (Me) I work a lot, but sure I might see you out some ni…

-          (Tom) How are Slasher and the rest of the boys getting on actually?

-          (Me) I don’t know, I stopped hanging around with people called Slasher a few years back.

-          (Tom) I think he married his cousin, in the end.

-          (Me) Cool.

-          (Tom) Cool, so we’ll get those pints some night then, yeah?

-          (Me) Sure.

-          (Tom) I’ll get you on Facebook, man.

-          (Me) Okay, good luck.

-          (Tom) Take it easy, man.

I guess it just boils down to being polite, but, as I’m sure you can gather from the above extract, Tom is a complete gimp. Unfortunately, society will force us all to have this conversation many times in our lives, which is something I’m sure the Tom’s of this world are relishing. I, for one, will continue to duck into nearby dental surgeries to avoid these encounters.

Morning Demons

Having a 7:00am alarm at this time of year is criminal, nobody will deny that. It’s dark outside and as soon as one toenail creeps out from beneath the duvet, it’s damn cold. This part of life, however, is a necessary evil and there is not much that can be done about it bar going down the “artist” route.*

The interesting thing is that I know that I must arise and go at this time every day. My alarm will ring at seven tomorrow morning, as it did this morning, but I will still be shocked and angry when it does so. Laying in the bed, fighting the demons who try to persuade me to stay there, I think the same thing on a daily basis, ‘I’m going to bed at nine tonight’. In the car on the way to work I say aloud to myself, ‘I’m going to bed as soon as I get home’. In my experience, however, it never seems to play out so smoothly.

It will all go swimmingly until evening arrives, the point at which my morning promises are betrayed. I will not go to bed as soon as I get home, nor will I retire at 9pm. Midnight will eventually creep up on me and I will realise that I’ve spent the entire evening fluting around. I will set my alarm, close my eyes and wake up at seven once again. The shock and anger will return, and the demons will be more difficult to slay.

I will make the same promises. I will break the same promises.

* “Artists” must still get up on Thursdays to collect their rock n’ roll.

Browsing Friends

It’s important to have a good wingman, and I guess that’s why Chrome and I get on so well. We’ve been best friends ever since I asked him for directions to the P.E. hall on the first day of school. We’re thick as thieves at this stage, so much so, he practically finishes my sentences.

You should see him in action, slicker than slick, he is. You’ll never catch him out. No matter what you throw at him, he always has an answer at the ready. He can be a bit sleazy for certain tastes; I mean I have often seen him operate incognito when dealing with the fairer sex, breaking hearts for sport. I can assure you he doesn’t even remember the names of those poor girls.

As a result of his renegade-like lifestyle, Chrome has had to deal with a certain amount of animosity over the years. My Dad, Internet Explorer, or IE as my friends call him, thinks he’s somewhat of a Johnny-Come-Lately. IE is what we would call ‘old school’, he gets his thrills from rambling around the golf course on a Sunday morning giving out about Chrome’s yellow trousers.

Truth be told, IE is getting a bit slow. I’m constantly forced to repeat myself with him, and it’s only on rare occasions that I get a relevant response. He also suffers from chronic narcolepsy, which doesn’t help. Every time I turn my back, he just crashes.

IE isn’t the only one who gives Chrome a hard time though, our ‘friend’ Safari hates him. Safari is a guy we went to school with, the kind of guy who always had to be different, somewhat of a hipster. I met him over Christmas actually; he was reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment outside a café on South William Street wearing two jackets, a scarf, a hat, gloves and, if I’m not mistaken, a snood. He spent half an hour lecturing me about Chrome’s apparently misguided mainstream views, all the while using his fork to chase an amuse-bouche around his plate. He also spent some time giving out about mainstream movies and mainstream music. He uses the word ‘mainstream’ a lot.

My big brother, Firefox, is the only one who doesn’t give Chrome a hard time. He was my wingman a few years back, and we did well. Firefox is a really solid guy. Women automatically trust me when I am hanging around with him, they know him and they like him. He is the opposite of Chrome; he’s an accountant, he drives a Toyota Avensis and he’s a bad dancer. However, what he lacks in flash, he makes up for in reliability. He’s the type that won’t let a girl down, but he’s not likely to sweep her off her feet by the same token.

Ultimately, I guess it depends on what type of girl I’m looking to attract. I could go cougar hunting around the bingo circuit with IE, that’s one option. I could hang around the indie movie-theatre with Safari and do recreational drugs with some chick who hates her parents. I could head to a trendy bar with Firefox and find a sensible, well-educated woman looking for a long term relationship. Or, I could just head to Coppers with Chrome and roll the dice.

Taxi to Harcourt Street, please.

Social Relationships

Twitter is my current girlfriend, we’ve been going steady for the bones of a year now and we’re getting on great. I tell her about my day and she seems to love it, I really think she could be the one. Facebook is the girl that I went out with for a few years, and Twitter just doesn’t trust, nor will she ever trust. Bebo was a girl whom I was seeing for a year or two when I started college, Twitter and I look back at her and we laugh together. Bebo was a mess of a woman, and she really let herself go in the end. Twitter knows that I have no interest in her and that is why she laughs, but I am still friends with Facebook and she hates that. She is always giving out that I have loads of photos with Facebook and none with her, but I think that she should be happy because I talk to her every day and I rarely converse with Facebook.

The truth of the matter is that I love Twitter for who she is, she is intelligent and has a great sense of humour. Facebook is more of a blonde. I just want the two to get along. We’re seeing a relationship therapist called TweetDeck at the moment, and she seems to have brought the two girls a lot closer together. My relationship with both is much easier to manage now, as a result.

There was one other girl also, Google Plus was her name, but Twitter and Facebook never found out about her. It was brief, I mean she was sexy and she had one or two features that the others didn’t have, if you know what I mean, but then she just disappeared. I think she had a couple of sisters too, one of them went by the name of Buzz, I believe, but they disappeared too. Drifters, they must have been a family of drifters.