Seven Facebook Characters

Facebook has around 400,000,000 users and user types are developing faster than the price of petrol can change at the pumps. Here's a few you might recognise

1. The Human Torch
Flame wars - insulting online discussions, debates resulting in back-and-forth personal insults - have been around since the early days of the net. Back in the day, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) allowed people to insult each other in real time and before they had to rely on the vagaries of email and modems. Facebook by contrast allows you to insult someone and make sure that all their friends know about it - an almost irresistible urge for a Human Torch.

Torches can vary but in the main are youngsters between 13 and 24. Expert text speakers, they will often resort to text style writing presumably to make sure that message hit the nets just a little faster but reducing the result to complete incomprehensibility for anyone over the age of 35. Those that adopt something close to a sentence will usually eschew spelling punctuation and grammar.

Young mothers or mothers to be are often to be found here where the arrival of children has turned them from left-wing weed-smoking pseudo-anarchists to right-wing health freak (aside from drinking and smoking) Christian crusaders for their particular brand of social justice usually consisting of hanging "paedos" making sure "life is life" and for the more politically conscious claiming that "Europe is health and saferty gone mad!" Curiously, and using that wonderful Orwellian double-think that young people are capable of, they will at one and the same time bemoan the fact that a friend is "going down" for six months for GBH when the other person, in their eyes, clearly deserved it.

Most likely to say "Y the f**k you ignoring me 4. iv put up with your sh*t for the last time... you made ur bed you lay in it... Shaznay-Obediah is right you say sh*t behind peoples back's and then you dont say it to there face. your a jumped up skinny attension seeking <deleted> <deleted> <oh definitely deleted>!" Over and over again. 
Least likely to say "I see your point."

2. The Copywriter
The Copywriter believes fervently that he or she is the only one who reads the papers online and the moment they see an interesting article they will immediately copy it and post it as their status.  Often it will be a straight text copy in the vague hope that his/her friends will believe that the deathless prose in front of them has not come from The Daily Mail/Express/Guardian Online. (The Sun and The Mirror online seldom get a mention and it has been suggested to me that the ratio of words to er....pictures may be the reason.)

Most likely to say "To be fair, the Chancellor was constrained by the debacle inherited from Labour, the state of the global economy and coalition politics. But in an ideal world, Osborne, an instinctive believer in the small state, would have unveiled much more radical proposals. Here, the Mail’s new star columnist IAIN MARTIN suggests what he should have said . . . ...read" (Daily Mail 24/03/2011 Comment section)
Least likely to say Here is something I have just thought of.

3. The Booze Cruiser
The booze cruiser lives for the weekend. Monday to Friday are just days of the week to be crossed off the calendar before the arrival of "Saturday Night Fervour."

You may not hear from the cruiser for the rest of the week, aside from occasional comments about how the week has been but on Friday there will be a slew of posts counting down the hours until he or she can get out. Their Facebook name will often reflect their interest thus you find yourself getting a peek into the lifestyle of John HalfabottleofVodka Jones and wondering if you "liked" the Alcoholics Anonymous page he would get the hint.

Photos of the night will often be out of focus or you are left to puzzle the significance of a perfectly composed close up of a bottle of alcopop in a night club at 2am. The booze cruiser will often post on Sunday around 5pm bemoaning their hangover and vowing never to drink that much again. This seldom happens.

Most likely to say "God! What a night, I drank so much my teeth hurt and woke up at 9am with a traffic cone on my head! Fantastic!"
Least likely to say "Think I'll have a quiet one in and watch the box this Saturday."

4. The Street Maeven
The street maeven is in some way a more sophisticated version of the booze cruiser, but weighted heavily in favour of restaurants, specialist pubs, high octane Belgian lagers and the occasional beer festival they'll mix this with coffee shops and a long list of art galleries. Street maeven work best when they have a large town to work in or a job which keeps them on the move.

A street maeven somehow manages to keep tabs on every major event in their city and will be aware of art events so small that two people in the gallery constitutes a big crown. They will leave the office to at six to head for preferred piece of culture most evenings and the weekend will be an extensive tour of their territory. Non maevens often wonder if they need sleep. Maevens are conscientious and will often post a web-link for the education of the masses.

Most likely to say "Off to a wonderful revisionist history of 9th century Dutch horticulture, tonight, then going to a new coffee shop which only sells Wildebeest coffee then going to the Watakishiwa for a gig by the Lords of Shouting."
Least likely to say "Lets go to Blockbusters!"

5. The Code Warrior
The code warrior is a lover of the cryptic status message usually aimed at a friend on Facebook while being unaware that several hundred people are usually shaking their head and wondering what on earth he/she is trying to say.

At the extreme end of the scale any perceived insult will result in an impossible to understand message rendering their status pages about as comprehensible as an American wrestling commentator and usually driving friends not in on events to impotent fury as once more they are left to ponder the meaning of "Not doing it anymore!" "You know who you are?" and my personal favourite "huh!"

Most likely to say Something which makes no sense.
Least likely to say "I think (insert name) is wrong because (insert reason.)"

6. The Disaster Master
It's almost impossible for a disaster master to be anywhere else except in a sea of chaos and perturbation. Trials and tribulations follow them wherever they go. Medical and social problems abound; children are potential inmates of a high security prison or permanent habitués of the doctors surgery where their many and varied problems remain undiagnosed. The disaster master is hounded by debt collectors, credit card companies and retail stores usually as the result of a mix up which is nothing to do with them. Pipes burst, furniture fails to be delivered, friends let them down and their honest endeavours to make life work are cruelly rebuffed by an unfeeling society. Needless to say all this needs to be shared with their many Facebook friends.

Most likely to say "OMG! What a day, Chardonnay-Reisling was in trouble in the school - they ain't got a clue how to handle her - why shouldn't an eight year wear a Playbody G-string for PE, I ask you? And poor little Lubyanka ruined his costume for tomorrow's Non-Religious Community Orientated Festival of it Being Sometime-in-the-Middle-of-the-Year. I told him not to borrow his dad's Samurai swords. And the Job Centre have lost all my paperwork for the 16th time in a row and I say if they want me to work, they should find me a job, thing is there are no jobs out there and they expect me to live on a pittance and if that weren't enough the 60" plasma super sound 3D Mega-bass with Earthquake Stereo (TM) I've ordered didn't arrive today so I have to go to the store to moan at the manager for a couple of hours and the cat's got Münchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy  and keeps trying to tell me I'm ill. :-0 LOL PMSL."
Least likely to say "Very quiet today."

7. The Agenda Bender
The aim of the agenda bender is to shift the conversation to either themselves or a subject close to their heart. Politicians pages on Facebook are almost always agenda benders, especially if the politician in question is on the opposition side where any policy can be ridiculed and their own version inserted instead. But the true agenda bender will use the posts of their friends to "remind" them that their life is a bed of specially softened roses compared to the agenda bender's pain racked/complicated/emotionally shattered/legally complex existence.

Most likely to say. Yeah OK so you think you are having a hard time I have.....continues for several hundred words.
Least likely to say Poor you!

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