Horrible Facebook Groups

What purpose can Facebook groups serve? In some cases, they inform members with similar interests of upcoming events. In others, fans discuss a shared favorite TV show or movie. Most groups that I join are expressions of my interests to whoever visits my Facebook profile. For example, "Implementation of Wu-Tang Clan in Classrooms" informs my friends that I think using tax dollars to expose children to morally questionable music would be awesome. People who take life too seriously and also don't like real-world results join protest groups. Apparently, another popular kind of group exists for the sole purpose of annoying anyone who thinks about them for more than ten seconds.

Almost 2 million people have found reason to join the group "If you remember this you grew up in the '90s." What exchange could even take place between you and a friend who has joined the group? "Hey, this is awesome! I didn't think one of my other friends would recognize one of the at least two hundred cultural references listed here!"

2.7 million Facebookies and Facebookettes (this is how Shaq refers to us) have decided to join the group "Let's set and break a Guiness Record!!!! Approved by guinnessworldrecords.c." Without even reading its description, I know not to expect much. Not only did the creator of this group manage to spell "Guinness" two different ways in ten words, he decided that the last two letters of ".com" were a worthy sacrifice to the character limit for more exclamation points. What really puts this group over the demented edge is that it's nowhere close to the largest group on Facebook. Please everyone, if you want to join a group of this kind, at least pick one of the humorous versions with eight pathetic members.

The groups "I Will Go Slightly Out of My Way To Step On That Crunchy-Looking Leaf" and "I FLIP MY PILLOW OVER TO GET TO THE COLD SIDE" represent a class of groups that are met with the response, "Oh man, that is so totally me," instead of the more appropriate, "The youth of America have reached a new low." I can't imagine there is much conversation to be had about leaf crunching, so people must be joining this group to inform others about some aspect of their personality, if only that they are clever. Maybe that would be true if you made the group, but I think all the cleverness has been sucked dry by the 300,000 people that joined before you. Fortunately, the group "I bet I can find 100,000 people who like to breathe oxygen" has been made to mock these groups that might as well be named "Humans who are currently alive."