The Facebook ‘status update’ in light of yesterday

The Facebook ‘status update’ in light of yesterday

Are you sick of keeping your Facebook ‘status update’ up-to-date? I am. So I started venting my frustration by coming up with silly non-sequiturs that got old and moldy quickly- and had to be updated often.

So today, relying on the ever-true mantra, ‘if you can think it, it already exists on the Internet’ I Googled ‘cleverest status updates’. I know what you're thinking and I agree- I suck. Convinced that others were faced with the same conundrum I wanted to see what other people were doing so as to NOT have to update it so often. I found what I wasn’t looking for.

We agree that I suck, but apparently not as much as some people. There are bloggers and people on forums discussing the best status updates at length. What’s really disturbing is that most of their nominees really aren’t that good. It seems like there’s a lot of waste floating around planet Earth these days.

Yesterday Finland had its first high school shooting leaving eight innocent dead. The shooter also shot himself but last I heard was barely alive. Besides the tragedy of the senseless destruction of life, the saddest part of yesterday for me was that my first reaction was a dry- again? I hope I’ll never have to say- again? Again.

Could there be a sharper contrast between yesterday's tragedy and people competing for who types the cleverest keystrokes after is..? My stupid Google query brought on a revelation- the world today is seriously fucked up.

Who are these losers that bring guns to school and open fire on their classmates? Yesterday's nincompoop posted videos of himself on YouTube and announced that he’d be committing these heinous crimes today. No one stopped him. Were we busy updating our statuses?

It seems like 2007 will go down in history as the year of school shootings and Facebook status update competitions. Both are stupid, but one is harmless, although bitterly representative of the degenerative nature of how we spend our time. If people are really interested in status updates so much, let’s take it a step further.

I guess my way of grieving is starting a discourse on the ‘status update’. Let’s make a set of categories and nominate the winners. At the same time we can reflect on how fucking useless we can make ourselves at times. Why couldn’t we stop what happened today?

There are a few main categories to which sub-categories can be attached. If anyone feels like it, go ahead and elaborate. Here are my main categories:

1. Activity- Nikko is typing
2. Sentiment- Nikko is bewildered
3. Location- Nikko is at home
4. Non-sequitur- Nikko is a coconut
5. Nonsense – Nikko is öalkjgaiv
6. Using the pre-existing ‘is’- Nikko is olated a gene that causes breast cancer

I have to give credit to Olli Martela for being the first one I saw with a category 6. status update with ‘Olli is äni on turbomies’. Heppu Pentti pulled off a combo category 3 and 6 with ‘Heppu is tuu himassa’. Full points for that one.

I’m sure there are more categories, so go ahead and suggest them. We, the people of this year anno domino 2007 have nothing better to do.

I wish you all peace, love and pura vida. May those who lost loved ones find peace in their hearts. There is no way to make sense of this tragedy.

Keep on rockin' in the free world.