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.