Power Ranking My Five Most Depressing Facebook Friends

Rob Fox12 years ago

Facebook is pretty cool. Facebook is pretty cool…when you’re in college. It’s probably okay when you’re in high school too, though I wouldn’t know because the social media outlet had not yet been extended to high school kids when I was still spending my days smoking pot in cars, thinking Captain Morgan was an acceptable alcohol, and masturbating so often that the only way it could have been considered acceptable were if stroking my dick was the lone thing keeping the Earth revolving normally on its axis.

When you’re in college Facebook is full of cool party pictures, funny statuses about stuff like drunkenly throwing up on the flat iron grill of a bar’s kitchen, and that glorious month of second semester when all your lady friends post their spring break pictures to Facebook. Don’t act like you don’t enjoy Creeper Christmas. You do. Just own it. The point is that most people are entertaining in college. Sure you may have that random emo kid from your film class posting statuses like “If everything is supposed to be different now then why does it still feel the same? It’s like everyday is yesterday.” Fuck you emo kid, there’s a difference between vague and deep, learn it, and then shut the fuck up anyway.

Post-grad Facebook, meanwhile, is a wasteland of baby pictures, puppy pictures, statuses about getting to eat cake at work, pictures of food that people cooked themselves for dinner, etc. If I had the time or energy I would Jay Cutler every single one of their posts with a DONNNNNNNNTTTT CAAAARRRREEEEEEE.

This is especially true with the food posts. Oh my God you cooked a homemade pizza for yourself!?!?! You put asparagus on it?!?! YOU MUST BE A BRILLIANT CHEF! Never mind that it’s misshapen, unevenly cooked, and generally looks like shit! I hope you accidentally left the gas on your oven and you asphyxiate in your sleep tonight so that your last ever meal was your piece of shit pizza that you tried to convince the world was delicious. You must pay for your lies.

If you think that death wish is too harsh you either haven’t graduated or you’re the one posting these food pictures, and if the case is the latter then next time you’re about to cook something you think everyone needs to see kindly stick your head in the oven instead of the overly elaborate but in all likelihood soon to be poorly executed meal. And if said food sharers end up gaining a lot of post-grad weight and it shows in a recent picture I motion that it’s totally acceptable to point this out to them in the comments. “Wow you’ve gotten big! All that food you’ve been taking pictures of must be delicious!”

Post-grad weight gain, by the way, is another insanely depressing thing to see on post-grad Facebook. You think the Freshman Fifteen is bad? Try the Post-Grad Gain. You can’t even assign an actual number to the term because there’s no ceiling on how unattractive people are capable of becoming after school.

Now, this isn’t to say that all of my Facebook friends are boring, far from it actually. But the most habitual users of Facebook, the ones that take up my newsfeed the most, are the people I can’t stand. They make me yearn for the days of the college emo kid, because at least that kid was upfront with how shitty his life was. These people are trying to convince you otherwise, but their lack of self-awareness or their transparent attempts at wanting to be interesting/have something to say are a thousand times more depressing than some ninety pound pussy complaining about an ex-girlfriend from his sophomore year of high school.

I’d be lying if I said that these people don’t entertain me though. It’s not a good sort of entertainment, don’t get me wrong, it’s very much a sad and guilty one, like that adult baby show or any porn involving one woman and more than four penises. But these people are fascinating, and because these sad, sad souls fascinate me so much, I decided to power rank my five most depressing friends on Facebook.

5. The Lonely Fantasy Junkie

This guy is a relatively new Facebook friend but he has SKYROCKETED into the top 5. Usually you only see brand new talent jump this high into a set of rankings when discussing a University of Kentucky basketball team. I can tell you that if John Calipari were recruiting sad nerds instead of future lottery picks this kid would be on a private jet, balls deep in a gaggle of UK cheerleaders right now. Shit, Coach Cal would probably learn Elvish for him. He posted this beauty the other day:

AQUA DRAGON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or would Mer-Dragon be better?

I’m not even going to get into the fact that if that dragon was underwater, i.e. without the ability to spit fire, Great White Sharks would rip it to shreds, so this “master of the ocean” look that the picture is going for is a complete fallacy. Your picture doesn’t even make sense, sir. You are a nerd and a shitty one at that. But his enthusiasm for weird fantasy stuff is mostly just amusing. If that’s what he’s into then that’s what he’s into. I disagree with your odd love of dragons, but I will defend to the death your right to oddly love those dragons. What actually bums me out are statuses like these:

“Going to a karoke bar alone drinking whiskey was a lot different than I thought it would be.”

That sounds like the status update of a divorced Japanese man.

4. The Whiny Sports Blogger

I’m sad to say this guy was actually in my fraternity, though much older than me. He was what we all liked to call a rec sports B-Team all-star. Unfortunately he never wore that badge with the irony it was supposed to be worn with. If someone drunkenly dropped a pop fly in softball he’d angrily spike his glove into the ground. If someone sucked at soccer because it’s fucking soccer, he’d whine at them like a six-year-old girl who both desperately wanted candy and was somehow defying nature and menstruating.

He was a nice guy when sports weren’t involved, but unfortunately sports are all he posts about now, and he decided to grace the world with long form commentary via a blog that he posts a link to once a week. Like a graphic romance novel about discovering love as an elderly widow that was written by your grandmother, it’s nearly (nearly) unreadable. Just seeing the links are enough make me cringe. The fact that he’s a Mizzou fan only makes it worse since that gives him a seemingly endless amount of things to complain about.

With this guy I would PREFER to hear about his child (who is actually adorable), or his uninteresting job, or literally anything other than his sports opinions. It’s all the knowledge of Skip Bayless without any of the personality, and each post is like 3,000 words. Oof. May I recommend using that time to teach your son sports so that you may one day complain about him instead?

At least he’s married and has a cute kid.

3. The Guy Who is Really Optimistic But Totally Shouldn’t Be

This guy has several useless degrees (and presumably a mountain of debt), is thirty, single, and until about five months ago managed a coffee shop. I’m not against being optimistic, in fact I despise pessimists, but man does this guy’s Facebook just scream, “I SWEAR TO GOD I’M HAPPY AND WILL CONVINCE YOU AND IN THE PROCESS MYSELF OF SUCH.” There are about six of those a day. But who knows, maybe I’m just an asshole (okay I am).

Basically the tone of his status updates all sound like this to me:

Well, except for this status update, which is flatly depressing from a thousand different angles.

“The big 3-0 tomorrow has me feeling very reflective. I wish I had done more with my 20’s.”

2. The Lonely Middle Aged Man

Say what you will about the other people on this list, but at least they’re still young(ish), or married, or have the director’s cut DVD of Dragonheart. Every status update from Lonely Middle Aged Man is either about his dog or the success of losing three pounds in what I assume is a forty and up jazzercise class. The worst part is that his status updates are all backhanded compliments to HIMSELF at this point.

“Just lost three pounds, looking good! Too bad I didn’t have a Christmas party to go to to show it off…”

If A Christmas Carol had ended with Ebenezer Scrooge standing over his future grave with the ghost of Christmas future, that would still be a less depressing Christmas than the one described above. I mean, at least Scrooge was still rich. He could’ve gone home and sent for a bunch of cockney hookers.

1. Formerly Hot Girl Who Got Married, Put on Some Weight, and Will in All Likelihood be Wrecked Forever by a Her First Baby

It’s a tragedy.