Emmet Purcell - 99 Reasons Everyone Hates Facebook

ISBN: 9781626757547

Emmet Purcell, from County Kildare, Ireland, graduated from the University of Huddersfield in 2008 with a BA (Hons) in Print Journalism and Media after obtaining a Higher National Diploma for Media Journalism in 2006 from the Ballyfermot College of Further Education.

His work has since appeared in publications including The Foundation, Qatar Foundation Telegraph, JOE.ie, Game.ie, Totally Dublin, Click Magazine, the Liffey Champion, and the Leinster Leader.

Emmet is currently a Senior Writer for the Qatar Foundation Telegraph and The Foundation and lives in Doha, Qatar, where he is usually bored out of his mind.

99 Reasons Everyone Hates Facebook is his first book.

Emmet can be reached via the following channels:

Facebook: Facebook.com/emmet.purcell

Twitter: Twitter.com/EmmetPurcell

Gmail: emmetpurcell@gmail.com

For me, if Im being perfectly honest

I am a simple man with simple tastes. I would rather crunch an assortment of Pringles between two slices of bread than slave over a hot stove for hours and I still arrogantly shake my head when I see adverts for iced coffee. I like keeping things short and simple, which is why Facebook appealed to my not-so-discerning tastes when it first surfaced.

In contrast to the messy, hyperactive, attention-deficient social networks of the time, Facebook was uncompromising and really, really blue. No options existed to customize your experience, there were no virtual crops to be unearthed and in fact, there was hardly anything to be unearthed from your friends pages. Streamlined, sleek and something else that begins with S, Facebook was a breath of fresh air, and because of this, it had users flocking from Friendster/MySpace in droves.

Years later, I have decided to write down 99 reasons that, when combined, explain why I hate Facebook. There are many, many articles that have been written about why the site currently palls in comparison to its previous iterations or how it has irrevocably changed humans into Instagrammed, duck-billed cretins, with each article attracting hundreds of comments from users sharing their own irritations.

My goal was to compile every last reason Facebook has become an essential pain in the ass, from which only the bravest of us can ever truly escape. Oh, and to mock people who are different from me at every opportunity. Enjoy.

1. Huge numbers of people gather together on Facebook to form the most pointless of groups

So imagine the scene: youre in the hospital, gently holding your newly born baby girl and tears are welling up. Holding her in your hands you begin to realize how precious and delicate life really is and you discover an instant bond with a child who you will love and cherish until your dying days.

Or do you, eh? Maybe you dont even like your daughter. Maybe shes just an annoying sobbing weakling who youre dying to give back to the nurse before heading home and putting your feet up.

The fact is, none of us out there will really know your true feelings, whether you even vaguely love that daughter, until youve hunted down an appropriate Facebook page that you can Like, thereby ensuring that your innermost feelings subsequently show up in our News Feeds.

Yes, there actually is a group on Facebook entitled Like if you love your daughter and its comprised of over 140,000 of the worlds best parents. Meanwhile, Like if you love your son is the unassailable victor with over 190,000 Likes. What does this tell us? That 330,000 Facebook people are idiots nothing more.

Why anyone feels the need to create such mind-bogglingly pointless groups is a mystery, yet the fact that hundreds of thousands of people feel the need or perhaps even the pressure to Like them is the true mystery. Want to hear a few more crazy groups with staggeringly high Likes? Just nod your head and we can continue

48,000 people have been suckered into clicking on Join if you love your dad. Ignoring this means you dont. 1,300 LOVE their dog. 270,000 have clicked LIKE If You Love Jesus and drum roll, please 1.2 million of you lot out there joined Click like if you love your kids!

To put that into perspective, the latter is a Facebook page whose population is creeping up to match the entire population of Estonia. If that Eastern European nation ever decided to bring back child labor, they could potentially fight and lose a war against these good-intentioned Facebook mouth breathers.

The truth is that people will join any group that makes them feel better about themselves, and considering that it takes less than a second to Like a page with its origins in Ahmedabad, India called: Like this if you think Eminem is better than Justin Bieber, theyll do it.

In fact, Eminem IS better than Justin Bieber 86,000+ people agree and there are only 71 people in the Justin Bieber is better than Eminem camp. In other words, these pointless groups attract the easily amused and serve zero purpose whatsoever unless youre trying to ruin a 12-year-old girls day and you need statistical evidence to beat them in an argument.

2. People with Facebook pages for their pets

Its perfectly normal to love your dog but giving it a fictional surname and backstory is just part of the slippery slope that eventually leads to pet lovers creating a Facebook page for their beloved.

As horrifying as it may sound to our burly ancestors, house pets are now part of the family and, as such, are treated with the care, love and respect that anyone would offer a hairy baby that is not allowed to use a toilet.

Lets backtrack a little. Try to imagine the rage that must have accompanied acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie in late 2011 when his first Facebook account was blocked, as it was believed to have been an imposter. Even after the Satanic Verses author (bit controversial, that book) produced his passport, as requested, to Facebook, he had to endure another hurdle to ensure that his page read Salman Rushdie, and not his birth name Ahmed Salman Rushdie. All that effort and yet a few famous pets are getting an easy ride into the world of Facebook membership.

As infuriating as that might have been for the esteemed writer, Id imagine that his perennially surprised eyebrows reached new heights when he came across the Facebook page afforded to Beast, the Hungarian sheepdog belonging to Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, a man who is very handsome and would never sue me.

Yep, the Oregon-born hound likely didnt encounter any such trouble when he had his own page created and, as of this writing, Beast has over one million fans that have Liked his exploits. We will repeat - over a million people follow the Facebook updates of a dog.

Presumably written by Zuckerberg or his wife Priscilla Chan at least we hope no one is actually paid to do this Beast notes down his interests as Herding Things, Cuddling, Loving and Eating while he arrogantly bookends his biography by stating I am extremely cute. Get over yourself, Beast.

The truly staggering fact is not just that OVER ONE MILLION PEOPLE FOLLOW A DOG ON FACEBOOK, its that millions are beginning to do the same and set up their own Facebook pages for their pets. Its no longer enough that you rub your neighbors dog behind his ear every now and then, now you actually have to read the critters daily musings too, or Like when they oh-so-hilariously mock their human owner.

It gets worse. Beast is nowhere close to being the internets favorite social-networking house pet. That dubious honor belongs to Sockington, a cat belonging to historian and computer administrator Jason Scott. As of this writing, the Twitter account of @Sockington has nearly 1.5 million followers. And you thought Kim Kardashians Twitter follower count was a sign of the impending Apocalypse?