Proof? Read, if you will, the following passage, stolen from a fundamentalist Christian website:
“God is love. He loves you more than anyone else ever has or ever could. In giving your life to Him, you invite His love into every aspect of who you are. His love is transforming, and His forgiveness is complete. God will transform you and make you a new person in Him. You will find the joy-filled life you’ve always longed to have.”
Now read that again, but replace “God” with “Facebook”. Um, yeah.
Facebook is the new fundamentalism, except worse. Christianity requires only that we please one simple God, who has the kind of reassuringly low standards that are satisfied by simple things like not murdering people and avoiding rimming rent boys on Sundays. Facebook, on the other hand, requires the constant production of audiovisual content carefully crafted to incite an appropriate mixture of jealousy, empathy, and intrigue, in up to 5000 hard-to-please lifestyle connoisseurs. This overwhelming pressure has led to the rise of a variety of intra-Facebook denominations. Each approaches their faith differently, with levels of devotion ranging from Church of England to Mormon all the way up to Amish and Westboro Baptist. Let’s break them down, in order from least, to most sinister:
The Church of Latter-day Bros
This is the faith of the BRO whose entire Facebook identity, from photos to wall posts to statuses, is built around his loyal cadre of BROS. Said BROS are generally staunchly malty, middle-class guys who the BRO met at his hall in first year, got on ok with, and subsequently flatted with/drank with/participated in the odd extra-curricular activity with for the rest of his time at Otago. However, the true function of the BROS is to reliably provide a steady stream of in-jokey comments on any given status/photo, links on any given wall, and to be available for occasional photographic documentation of said flatting/drinking/extra-curricular activities. This the faith of the BRO who is so insecure in his BROness that he feels the need to hit every one of his 1000 or so Facebook friends over the head with the fact that HE IS A BRO and HE HAS A TIGHT AS GROUP OF BROS and they DO COOL SHIT TOGETHER and HAVE ALL THESE COOL IN-JOKES RELATED TO ALL THAT COOL SHIT THEY DID TOGETHER.The overwhelming BROness of the group of BROS is confirmed by the carefully-selected locations to which the BROS will travel together, to get on the waste, go “slut hunting”, and acquire a new cover photo depicting the entire group of sweaty HOLIDAYBROS, who can number up to 20, wearing lat-baring baggy singlets, shorts, and Wayfarers. Acceptable BRO holidays include New Year’s trips to South East Asia and weekends away to Parklife, Summadayze, or Splendour In the Grass, mainly because of the obvious inference of casual sex, recreational drug usage, and general “loose times”.
Yes, the douchebag is strong in the BRO, but ultimately he is a harmless creature. All he wants is to reassure the world that he is here, he is not queer, and he is BRO. The BRO aspires only to be ever-so-slightly cooler than the absolute mainstream, and compared to those who feature further down this list, such a lack of social ambition is almost charming.
evilness rating 1/10
The Parish Church of Feigned Internationalism
Disciples of this denomination like to think of themselves as “international”. This is willful self-delusion on a par with the bumper sticker on my flatmate’s car which reads “Invercargill — Where Dreams Come True”. The average Parishioner has done a reasonable amount of travelling, probably taking in most of South-East Asia, Europe, and at least one of India, South America, the Middle East, or North Africa. This apparently entitles them to craft a Facebook identity based entirely around the nomadic, freewheeling lifestyle that inexplicably brings them back to Dunedin for four 7-week blocks of time each year. A fresh 100-photo album will be devoted to each locale the Parishioner travels through. Initially the album titles will be a little quirky — “Cancun — the birth of Los Gatos”, “Vegas — cigarettes and daddy issues”, “Up to no good in Singapore”. As the Parishioner travels more, they realise that the best way to project the image of an insouciant globe-trotter is via minimalist album titles in caps lock — “CROATIA 2011”, “LAOS 2011”, “THAILAND ‘12” — in order to better demonstrate that they are a sophisticated, world-weary traveller who has seen so much of the world they now lack the energy for album title quirkification.On arriving to a new city, the Parishioner will check in on their phone, while adding a token caption like “Why hellloooooo [insert popular tourist destination here]!!!”, possibly including an image of a beach, a plate of food, or an attractive person they hung out with for 10 minutes just to get a photo for Facebook. Subsequent updates are carefully crafted and monitored to ensure that that Parishioner is projecting precisely the right combination of wild gonzo spirit and cultural sensitivity. If there is a place the Parishioner particularly likes, they may even update their profile so it says that they “live” there, and “like” a brand of local beer.
The Parishioner’s cover photo will be either a photo of the back of their head as they gaze at a turquoise sea/mountain range (likely locations: Bali, Nepal), or a photo of them diving impressively into a body of water (likely locations: Greece, Laos).
Slightly more irritating/deluded than the BRO, the Parishioner genuinely believes that by crafting a profile around their travels they situate themselves firmly outside normal constructs of social judgment. They are wrong.
evilness rating 5/10
World Babeness Fellowship
The BROs and the Parishioners are laughable, but at their worst, they are like Jehovah’s Witnesses — irritating, but taking only time, and leaving only footprints and a pamphlet. No, the most dangerous domination is a greater evil than trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup combined. It has brainwashed half the population. It has set the cause of feminism back at least 500 years. I refer, of course, to the World Babeness Fellowship, of which nearly every female on Facebook is a member.Oh, WBF. WTF? We have regressed to the point where any sane observer would be quite forgiven for feeling that women are, in fact, not fit for much more than childbirth, cookery, and needlepoint. Is it really possible that women are collectively so insipid that no comment or caption is complete without a <3 followed by several “xx”s? Is it really necessary to take about 500 photos within 10 minutes of arriving at every social event attended; of you making quirky-but-still-kinda-pretty faces, and captioning it “naughty wine time with my girls”? Or of you and your friends leaping into the air above a perfectly innocent stretch of sand or asphalt, in the hope of eliciting comments like “Omg looks like so much fun! Miss you!” and “Crazy kids!”? Are you so pathetic that you need to be “married” to your best friend on the ‘book, just to prove to the world how “amaze” your girlfriends are? Just how much time do you and your “wife” devote to memorising “cute-quirky” poses, just so people will comment with “You girls are too cute. xxxx”? Will you actually die if you stop commenting “You babe xx”, or worse “You are such a babe Lou. <3 you! xxxxx” on every single photo of another woman that appears on Facebook, just so her karmic debt ensures she’ll comment the same on all of your pictures? You know, no matter what Dove’s head of marketing might pretend to think, not every woman is beautiful. In fact, most women are actually quite ugly, just as most men are actually quite ugly. We are not stupid, we know you only look hot when you’re thoroughly Instagrammed from exactly the right angle. Let’s just stop pretending, mmkay? It’s kinder to everyone in the long run.
And by the way, wannabe-indie cover photos of Quirky Images or Banksy graffiti you found on Pinterest do not make anyone think you are living an alternative Edie Sedgwick-esque life of freewheeling debauchery. They just confirm your status as yet another prissy middle-class girl with a limp blonde ponytail and vague dreams of Bohemia, who will marry a periodontist and settle down in Takapuna. <3 xxxxx
evilness rating 10/10
