Simply clicking on a button is not (usually) a valid form of protest

It's time for that infamous question - What's been annoying you today Brawny?

Well, apart from the usual (lack of money, annoyance with job, still no concrete plans to move back to Poole, still worrying about the Christmas presents I ordered online weeks ago that haven't yet arrived), there is one thing that's been irritating me in the last few days...

Facebook groups.

For those few of you who don't have Facebook, groups are exactly what they sound like, people united under a common banner or cause. When Facebook started (although I obviously mean when I started to use Facebook, as I have no previous knowledge of what it was like before I used it. For all I know it could have been a site which flashed up an image of Santa Claus knifing a small child while a loop of a distorted version of "Santa Claus is coming to town" played in the background. I think it unlikely, but one never knows for sure (Incidentally, can you tell that I'm having a strangely festive day, due to the large amount of Christmas influence in that metaphor? Thought so)) then groups seemed to primarily be for people to show appreciation of films, TV, music etc., or to group up with some of your friends (groups for organisations you belong to, etc.). Now, since they created pages for which you can become a "fan", most music/TV/Films have graduated to those, (Although there's still no Norwich and Saggers page, shamefully) and groups have become the subject of "comedy".

Now when I say "Comedy" I mean it in the lowest sense, the comedy usually coming from funny group titles or strange situations. (Yes I am aware that sentence makes me sound like a comedy snob, but tough (Do you get comedy snobs? I guess you do, being as I am one of them))

Now this is fine - it's annoying when people invite you to join groups that you don't want to join, and I don't understand why you'd join a group which just had a funny name but nothing else - and therefore no reason to have a group rather than simply writing the joke in your status or anything else, but it does occasionally throw up such amusing titles such as the one I joined yesterday, purely to honour the title "Girls, stop flicking your bean to Twilight, and go make me a Bacon Sandwich", which is, quite frankly, hilarious.

But the types of groups which annoy me the most are the "If [enter stupidly large number] of people join, then [enter task / achievement]"

(By the way, I attempted to make the post easy to understand for those who don't use facebook, but I don't care anymore, so apologies if I end up alienating any of you)

These types of groups can be easily divided into two sections: The personal, which are challenges made by people, and the ones I like to term the NFW groups (if you don't understand what I mean by NFW, then tough, I'm not explaining it here), in which the result of the challenge is something completely out of the control of the person who made the group.

Having just searched Facebook groups for the key words "If people join" (Which, incidentally has returned a horrendous number of results) then I can see that the vast majority of these groups are personal, which while they may be stupid, I have no problem with. If you want to turn your house into a pirate ship, or tattoo Facebook on your neck, or legally change your name to Edward Cullen, and you feel that getting a million people to say you should do it somehow justifies the idiotic decision (talk about peer pressure) then fine. The point is that these tasks are achievable because the only idiot who needs persuading is the person who put it up in the first place. As soon as you involve other people, however, you know that it won't happen. For example there's a group entitled "If 1,170,000 people join, My Girlfriend will Marry Me!". I have news for you my friend, no she won't. If she doesn't want to marry you now, getting a load of strangers to click on a button won't change that.

The other type of group, however, which is still in the minority, gives examples of such things as "If 10,000,000 people join this, they will make an all Family Guy channel!", "If 1,000,000 people join then the original Facebook will stay" or "If 10,000,000 people join, Emma Watson will date me"

These are the types I hate - because they are blatantly promising something that they have no control over (OK, I grant you that the Emma Watson one is probably a joke) but people seem to think that just by clicking a button they can create a TV channel, or change the minds of people who have redesigned something for a reason. WAKE UP! NOTHING WILL HAPPEN!

Having just spent my time scrawling through some of my search results to find examples, what has also disturbed me slightly is how many comedy groups there are that say "If [insert number here] join then NOTHING WILL HAPPEN [Or some other comic witticism]" Whilst I hold no issues with their viewpoint, being as it is similar to my own, the number of groups with slight variations on that name now seem to vastly exceed the number of groups created by people being serious - so the parodies and sarcasm is now enveloping the original subject, until eventually the sarcasm and parody will be all that is left. Also, if you hate such groups so much, then why spend the time creating a group moaning about it? That just seems silly to me..

Although I have now spent time blogging about it, so maybe I'm just as bad...

Anyways - I shall return with another blog at some point soon. Maybe the next one will be interesting, you never know...