An Ode to Fallen Facebook Fads

The Wall that was more like a chalkboard: Back in the day, the Wall was pretty much the only way to publicly interact with your friends. However, this Wall did not play by the rules of the modern Wall. This Wall was anonymous and could be edited by any one of your friends. Anyone could straight up erase all of your fawning Wall Posts like, “I love having Philosophy class with you :D (from Megan)” or “Sooo drunk last night LOL –Sam P.” because back then, no one understood the Wall and these are the types of things one would write.

Anyway, someone could erase all of those messages and replace them with something like, “You dirty slut. Your boyfriend deserves to know what kind of nasty bitch he’s dating, die in a fire.” Like, this could happen to your roommate, you know? All of her hard-earned Wall Posts replaced with this one demoralizing, anonymous Wall Post. You might say, “Dude. Your fucking wall!1!!11!” and she’ll cry, and you and the rest of your roommates will spend the day reconstructing her Wall Posts of yesteryear. It’s as if Nothing. Ever. Happened.

Groups: Groups still exist, but with the advent of Fan Pages, they’ve become a relic of the past; something that anyone with Facebook savvy would get an invite to in 2011 and say, “Oh, honey. Your band has a Group? …Bless your soul.” Groups are different from Fan Pages though, in that they feel less committal. I have a friend, Toad, who graduated with six Groups named in his honor. I still belong to two of them. I also belong to ‘I Love Dolphins,’ ‘End Ignorance Against Wolves,’ and ‘The Ninja Turtles Could Kick the Shit Out of the Power Rangers.’

Bumper Stickers: A trend I remember fondly. At one point in college, I had five female roommates. The six of us would sit in the same room in complete silence and either waste hours battling on Scrabulous.com or sending each other Bumper Stickers. I only permitted Bumper Stickers from Someecards to remain on my page. If I received anything like “Friends are the family God forgot to give you LOL,” I’d delete it immediately, citing my strictly enforced Bumper Sticker standard. This stipulation resulted in a collection of refined and relevant Bumper Stickers that accurately reflected my sensibilities.

SuperPoke: I had a group of friends that never returned home during our breaks from college, opting instead to take summer classes or work at internships. Perhaps we felt overworked for the first time in our lives, but the summer of 2007 was unofficially the summer of “unwinding” via SuperPoke. We’d “take sexy back “ from each other, pwn each other, and on occasion we’d SuperPoke each other in such a fashion that one of us would actually have to Google what we’d just done (this is how I learned the meaning of ‘defenestrate’).

Gifts: Gifts was introduced right around Valentine’s Day of 2007 and offered up a free gift or two that you could give away to anyone. I received a Dick in a Box from my boyfriend at the time and a chocolate heart from the guy I lost my virginity to. The dude I secretly loved sent his girlfriend a thong with the message, “You need to buy more of these.” Haha. Prude bitch. Gifts went completely defunct by late 2010, when Facebook realized that no one on the internet pays for anything.

Compare People: Compare People was the perfect app for a 20-year-old girl in that it allowed you to be a total bitch and make snap judgments and no one would ever have to know what a hater you are. “Who is more attractive?” Compare People would ask, and you would choose someone marginally attractive over the undeniably pretty girl who hates you, because you’d never let that bitch win anything.

The worst part of Compare People was seeing your own stats at the end. A lot of people wanted to kiss me and sleep with me, but I always lost in the marriage department and this somehow invalidated my existence. Who was I up against that I’d lost the marriage vote three times? I justified this loss by reminding myself that I was a smoker, and that could be a deal breaker, you know? Yeah. That must be it.

Friend Quiz: What seemed like a fun, carefree activity to get to know your friends was actually a hotbed for controversy should you receive an embarrassingly low score on your friend’s self-made quiz. How do you NOT know how many times I’ve broken my arm?! How could you say that ‘Help me Rhonda’ is my favorite Beach Boys song when it’s clearly ‘Kokomo’? Why don’t you know the name of my elementary school? And you’d stammer and say, “But… but we’re 21 and I just met you six months ago,” and you’d think to yourself, “Don’t insinuate that I’m a bad friend, psycho,” because you’re not. You’re not a bad friend, right? Maybe sometimes you’re a bad friend, but only 40% of the time. You’re a good friend. Mostly.

25 things no one knows about me: Representative of all Notes trends is 25 things no one knows about me; a self-indulgent list making activity in which the participant names 25 little-known truths about themselves, tags 25 people, and waits for the comments to roll in. “You’re so quirky!” “Or, “OMG SO MUCH THIS ON #8.” Some people would write things like “6. My mom is 1/8 Ethiopian,” but sometimes the responses are much longer and suggest that the note-writer may need therapy. For example:

9. The song “Dear Prudence” makes me think of this scenario: A girl leaves a party after some sort of conflict. She’s walking home looking haggard, possibly crying. Maybe there’s some shoddy camerawork, and it’s a little anti-climatic until 2 minutes, 50 seconds into the song when she’s attacked, tossed around by a couple of guys. At 3 minutes, 39 seconds, she’s discarded. And it’s always played in my head that way. One of my favorite Beatles songs.

In related news, can anyone recommend an awesome therapist? Asking for a friend.