Farcebook Groups – The most annoying feature ever.

If you’ve logged into Facebook recently the chances are that at some point you’ve seen a suggestion rather similar to this.  That’s right, it’s yet another ‘official petition’ for this, that or the other; the creation of some illiterate hopeful who aims to overthrow society with their mighty group.

I’m not sure what annoys me more: the actual existence of the group in the first place, or the shocking grammar, spelling, and punctuation that is used in the title and information boxes for these groups.  If you’re trying to pull off ‘official’ at least look up how to spell it in the dictionary first, please?

I realise that campaigns on social networks have been met with limited success in the past; most notably the sustained effort to get Wispa back on the market, but that is by no means an indication that Ruth Jones and James Corden are going to slip into writing mode just because 500,000 people on Facebook want them to.

I think Facebook is beginning to lose focus.  Over the past few months I have seen ever fewer people actually using it for anything really interesting – even status updates have become infrequent and boring.  It seems to be all about the pages you’re a fan of, and the groups to which you belong.  Quite frankly I’m not interested, and I wish Facebook would do more to discourage or ban these “join and add all your friends to get Facebook Chat v2.0″ type groups that are set up purely to gain members.  In fact, the ones that suggest you’ll get something wonderful for inviting all your friends to join are probably the worst offenders because they’re the ones that are utterly pointless; at least the groups trying to bring things back have some point to them.

If you’re thinking of creating a Facebook group to try and effect a change in the world here’s a few things to consider:

• Is your group really likely to gain momentum? Pick something people are interested in.
• Do some research – it takes two minutes to do a quick background search on Facebook to see if other people are doing the same thing you’re planning.  If you find something, don’t duplicate it, join forces.  Remember that duplication doesn’t mean better, it means SPAM.
• If you do press ahead think of a suitable title and learn how to spell it.  I cannot tell you how soul-destroying it is to see a badly worded, unnecessarily long, grammatically incorrect group name.  If you want to annoy people who still care about the English language ignoring this point will guarantee success.

• Don’t pretend to be something you’re not, and avoid making promises you’ll never be able to keep.  “Official” is an over-used term in my opinion.  You may be the first, or only, group that is dedicated to your cause, but that doesn’t mean you’re official.  Promising to start a UK government petition in favour of your proposal isn’t likely to earn Brownie points either, especially as I’m pretty sure the Labour Party isn’t interested in Gavin & Stacey!

I don’t want to discourage fan pages or groups because I think they’re a good way for people to share a common interest in people, TV shows, films et al.  I do want to discourage the culture of groups that think they can change the world, when they very obviously can’t.

If Ruth Jones and James Corden do decide to write another series of Gavin & Stacey I would want it to be because they genuinely had some fantastic material that they thought they could work with.  If it were to be rushed, low quality, trash generated purely to satisfy fans I think it would totally destroy the legacy the 3 series have built up.  Let it go.  There will be other TV series that you can get your teeth stuck into; until then, why not have a Wispa?

James