Defacebook

Facebook is a social utility that facilitates social harmony by allowing you to stalk people. I can't explain what else it does, and nobody else can either. You sign up to it and then you just sit there. Occasionally you add things called 'applications' which don't apply, annoy people by poking them, or sending them invitations to stupid games like 'vampire' or 'fight club'.

I was at a pub the other night and a guy was telling me and others how on their honeymoon, he and his wife had sat on separate computers playing one another on Facebook's scrabble application - rather than playing it with a board. We were all geeks, and the general consent seemed to be that this was rather romantic.

Facebook also encourages a weird approach to the English language. Occasionally you can 'update your status' with outrageous lies like 'Timothy is eating noodles out of the back of a semi-sentient washing machine' or 'Timothy is a bigger genius than Einstein' or 'Timothy is having sensuous feelings about his W C Fields DVD'. When you add people to your list of contacts, suddenly, mysteriously, Facebook designates you 'Friends', though you may very well be adding an enemy in order to insult them more effectively, or something like that. Also, when you update items on your profile, Facebook updates others, but it doesn't call you 'She' or 'He' or even 'It', it insists on referring to you in the plural, as 'They'. For instance: 'Tim Train updated their profile. They added to quotes...' etc, etc.

In addition to not knowing what Facebook is for, a lot of people seem not even to be certain about its name. I remember hearing on the radio last week a presenter refer to it as 'MyFace', confusing it with its mortal enemy, 'MySpace'. The guy he was interviewing seemed certain that Facebook was the 'new cool place to be', but it also seemed certain that he had no idea what he was talking about, since he couldn't really explain what Facebook was for, either.

Facebook: the perfect tool for the apathetic generation, since it allows you to sign up and do nothing? Perhaps in future Facebook could branch out and offer a range of alternative products:

For Nazis: Racebook.

For hippies: Spacebook.

For feminists: Macebook.

For aglet fetishists: Lacebook.

For lunatics: Nutcasebook.