As a new class of freshmen enter colleges nationwide, social networking sites will serve as host to tens of millions of new and often phony friendships being formed.
It’s a well-known fact that an overwhelming majority of college students use Facebook on a frequent basis, but how much is too much? Although there is a way to do it right and use Facebook as a way to help your image and stay up to date with other people, the world’s most popular social networking website is often overused to a fault by a surprisingly large number of college students. Enter the life of a Facebook Legend.
Of course by now, even as an incoming freshman, you’ve probably established a strong foundation of friends and crafted a strong repertoire of legitimate looking pictures that make you appear to be fun, yet not overly crazy. With all of the potential downtime in college and other times that could be used for studying, a college student is presented with more opportunities to use Facebook, and those who take extreme advantage of these opportunities develop into Facebook Legends (FBLs).
Most people know who the Facebook Legends on their friend lists are, they’ve just never been able to refer to the practice of overusing Facebook as something other than “using Facebook a lot.” A Facebook Legend is a person who does just that, utilize Facebook to a fault in an attempt to gain popularity, stay close with people, or just let the Facebook community know exactly what they’re up to at all times.
Though there are a ton of different factors that contribute to the definition of a Facebook Legend, there are some important general strategies used by FBLs to keep in mind and be weary of:
-A Facebook Legend uses the wall to say hello to anybody and everybody because they’re not quite on calling terms with most people and a text or Facebook message wouldn’t allow everybody else to see that they’re reaching out to other people.
-A Facebook Legend also “likes” pretty much everything, from fan pages to pictures to random statuses of people they haven’t spoken with in years. No text, link, video or picture is safe from the all-too-common thumbs up approval of a Facebook Legend.
-Legends also try to gain as many friends as possible without seeming too ridiculous. A Facebook Legend will likely have over 1,000 friends, usually picking up an average of 2 or 3 for every Saturday night they actually log off and leave their dorm rooms. This in turn helps with wall popularity, as they will have more walls to write on and more Happy Birthdays to wish.
When referring to a Facebook Legend, one can simply state the name of the Legend, followed by their title as a FBL. For example, if you decide to accept a friend request from Shawn Jones, a prospective writer for the Michigan Daily that you met at Pre-Class Bash, and find that he writes on your wall every other day, likes all of your statuses, has 1,732 friends, and takes up 5 out of the 8 top stories on your news feed, you’d refer to him as Shawn Jones, Facebook Legend. Similarly, if you were to friend Polly Smith, a women’s studies major who enjoys tagging you and dozens of other people in her hourly status updates in order to receive the maximum number of comments, you’d refer to Miss Smith as Polly Smith, Facebook Legend. Facebook Legends come from every race, culture, and ethnicity and know no boundaries around the globe. It should be noted that in some cases, Facebook Legends have already been established in high school, but the majority of Legends begin to wreak havoc in their college years.
Though it’s surprisingly easy to become addicted to Facebook and fall into the category of Facebook Legend, there are plenty of better alternatives that will help you in the long run and preserve your relationships with Facebook friends. Here’s why you don’t want to be a Facebook Legend in college:
-In addition to the clichés your parents and Campus Day tour guide throw around, like “There’s so much to do here” and “You can be anybody you want to be,” there are plenty of other legitimately strong reasons not to be sucked into the Facebook vacuum. Besides wasting the majority of a person’s time checking out pictures and writing on walls of people they likely don’t even deal with on a regular basis, Facebook Legends are missing out on other important aspects to college. At a place like Michigan where it’s almost impossible for someone to have enough time to pursue all of their interests, Facebook Legends sell themselves even shorter of other important things they could be exploring and people they could be meeting because of the extensive time they spend promoting themselves through an unrealistic social networking lifestyle.
-Although a Facebook Legend usually receive extended attention at first, usually from other FBLs or other frequent Facebook users, the attention either becomes less sincere in the long run or diminishes completely once the title of FBL has been implied. Basically, a Facebook Legend’s presence gets annoying to everybody else online.
-By not constantly updating their Facebook page, a person leaves a sense of mystery about themselves, which can be a good thing. The general rule here is that the more details someone puts about their life online, the less personal interaction people need to have to see who they really are and what they’re all about. It’s much easier for the average Facebook creeper to classify and make interpretations about a person who leaves status updates for their upcoming plans and posts pictures from every party they go to than a person who keeps to themselves and occasionally is tagged in a picture with some friends or family members. Yeah, it’s college and most people are trying to branch out and make a name for themselves, but you owe it to yourself not to let your name become more popular online than in person.
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