IN UR MACHINE ANSERIN UR CALLS???
Everyone knows that exam time is Facebook time. You’ve just found the perfect spot in Van Pelt (where no one can see your laptop’s screen) so what’s the first thing you do? Open up Facebook and try to postpone your studying for as long as possible. I have to admit that I’m victim to these same urges.
I’m here to tell you that there may be something even more entertaining than perusing pictures tagged of you and checking the statuses of kids from your high school to see where they’ve gotten into college (shoutout, prefrosh!). I’m talking about the new ads on Facebook. Now, I know that Mark Zuckerberg has to rake in the cash somehow, but some of these are just ridiculous. In case you missed them, here’s a roundup of a few of the most bizarre.
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Because nothing says tact quite like chickpeas.
I like to pretend I’m cool by telling people that I’m over Facebook. And, to a certain extent, I am. I don’t really write on people’s walls (at least not as compulsively as I used to…oh, freshman year), and it takes a herculean effort for me to actually post pictures. But last night, I was happier than I’ve ever been that Facebook is a part of my life. The reason? Drunk Facebook messaging.
At 1:16 AM, I received the following message from a guy (let’s call him Random Guy) whom I met briefly at Kaplan SAT teacher training three years ago, and haven’t spoken to since:
“You’re cute. I wish I had asked you out during that Kaplan training many years ago.
P.S. Have you ever been to Urbino?”
There are several reasons–-aside from the massive ego boost–-why this is the most amazing thing that has ever happened. First of all, why on earth would Random Guy ask if I’ve been to Urbino? (Which I had to Wiki; apparently, it’s a small town in Italy. Who knew?) Did he maybe think he saw me there? Do I seem like the sort of person who haunts walled Italian cities? Secondly, why was Random Guy drunk on a Wednesday night? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but still, it’s very curious. And since the last time I thought about Random Guy was when I accepted his friend request at the beginning of 2006, how did he wind up thinking about me all the way at the end of 2008? I have so many questions, I’m actually considering responding.
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Welcome back to Over It, the occasional feature that consists of a UTB contributor ranting about something they are so totally over.
Now that I’ve listened through I Am… Sasha Fierce a few times (and my Beyonce-mania is subsiding), I have returned to the usual forms of procrastination. This, of course, includes compulsively refreshing my Facebook home page and scanning through the updated News Feed. While admittedly, I can’t be sure whether I’m writing at the beginning of the trend or its end (or perhaps this isn’t so much a trend as a reflection of the company I keep?), my News Feed has become dominated by some of the most horrible perversions of Facebook that I have ever seen (well, almost).
Allow me to explain further. Many of my acquaintances have been recording videos during class which they then post to the Internet. Let me make something clear: while you may feel like a BAMF for doing this, it does not make you cool.
Look, I’m all for a good vlog every now and then (this example is not safe for work), but this is just ridiculous. Who the hell wants to watch you sit and make faces at a camera for four minutes while your professor drones on about market equilibrium in the background? Because chances are, if you find your class so boring that you have to vlog during it, I’m going to find your class so boring I don’t want to watch you sit in it. Also, when you try to mouth sentences in the camera, I can’t understand you.
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Happier, sluttier days: BMOC 2004
So you’ve probably heard the totally lame-o news that BMOC– shorthand for AXO’s popular annual philanthropy event, Big Man on Campus–is on the verge of being cancelled, which would make its record 2 for 4 over the years that seniors have been at Penn. Maybe you’ve even joined the SAVE BMOC group on Facebook, which points out that each year the event raises thousands of dollars to support victims of domestic violence. But have you stopped to consider that a lack of BMOC would leave our campus, like a fish without a bicycle, sadly BMOC-less? The chair of the UA and the president of the senior class serve as our elected leaders, but he who is BMOC is our unofficial spiritual guide. How will Street editors know who to put in Cultural Elite? Will the role instead fall to the Big Asian on Campus? And then who will fulfill the duties of the big Asian–Mr. and/or Ms. Penn? We truly fear that BMOC’s cancellation could result in a social power vacuum. Hey, Ron Daniels, if you agree to stay, we’ll let you be BMOC!
We hear that a decision on BMOC’s fate will be made tomorrow morning. We’re crossing our fingers.
Made-for-UTB dramatization.
They say the only constant in life is change, and the same is definitely true of Facebook. You simply can’t rely on Facebook to stay the same–it’s constantly changing its look and adding features that we hate at first but quickly grow dependent on, and it all very much fits into some neo-Marxist paradigm in which we become complicit in our own media manipulation. The latest example? Over the past few weeks, we’ve noticed that we can now see entire albums that contain tagged photos of our friends, even we’re not friends with the person that posted the album.
For example, let’s say Heidi Montag, arch-nemesis of Lauren Conrad (as of the last time we watched The Hills, which was over the summer), posted an album containing pictures of Stephanie Pratt. Stephanie is friends with both Heidi and Lauren, but Heidi and Lauren are very much not friends. Well, under the old Facebook photo protocals, the only photos that Lauren would be able to see from Heidi’s album would be ones that someone she is friends with, Stephanie, was tagged in. Now, though, Lauren can see the whole album, opening up a whole new world of possibilities: she can see who else attended Heidi’s party, she can view the photos in sequential order, and she can pick up on in-jokes that role out gradually over a series of captions. These may sound like small victories, but trust us, they can greatly enhance and contextualize your Facebook experience.
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I never thought a Facebook invitation would change my life until this showed up on my home page. Yes, ladies and gentleman, the BlackBerry team is coming to UPenn.
Now, while I may have made some harmful comments about Blackberries in the past, I have not been this giddy since getting my acceptance letter to Penn. Why, you may ask? That would be the promise of a photo with the BlackBerry mascot, who, not shockingly, is a giant BlackBerry. It’s not very often you get to pose with a life-size version of an object of scorn (unless, of course, you’re like some people we know, for whom Beauty and the Beast was a source of major childhood trauma).
I can only hope that the man inside the phone isn’t ticklish, because there are going to be a lot of people pushing those buttons.
Our etiquette guru Abby Johnston is back with more advice for you ill-mannered hoodlums. This time, she lays down the unspoken rules of the Facebook friend request.
Your number of friends on Facebook is an easily located statistic that shows anyone who cares enough to look essentially how popular you are. Thus, proving your popularity through acquiring as many friends as possible is important to at least some (if not the vast majority) of you. This issue brings us to this week’s topic of discussion: When is it appropriate to “friend” someone? Does the time span vary depending on the situation in which you meet someone? Is it ever appropriate to request someone you’ve never actually met?
How many of these people do you know?
Let’s start with the last question first, as it is the most pressing. Unless it is someone who, at the very least, knows a lot about you through amusing anecdotes or with whom you will be sharing some sort of experience (trip, class, birthday party, etc.) in the near future: no. The one exception to this rule is the summer before freshman year, when everyone reassures himself that he will survive college, maybe even thrive there, by friending a lot of other random freshmen. Creeping on a friend’s pictures, seeing one of his acquaintances that you find attractive (even though that person is from Bosnia or elsewhere that makes actually meeting her an unlikely event) and then friending her? Questionable at best.
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We love our Facebook friends very much, each and every one of them, except of course those that are not actual people. Unite ONine, of course, is not a person, but the obligatorily ridiculous name that this year’s Senior Gift Drive committee has come up with for the annual fundraiser. And they want to be our friend!
[Redacted] recently became friends with Unite ONine and thinks you may know Unite too.
To view this friend suggestion and request Unite as a friend, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?reqs.php
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
Protests aside, we will probably accept the request so we can watch our friend count climb one higher.
