Student Richard Baconsfield has enjoyed a lengthy relationship with social media since its humble beginnings. However in recent months he has been getting annoyed at the amount of ‘fake’ notifications he has to sift through till he gets to the real ones. It is slowly destroying his social life, apparently.
“I remember the glory days of MySpace and Bebo,” reminisces Richard. “On Bebo I could add all sorts of random people and never got half the amount of hassle I do with Facebook. MySpace was a social media dream. I could put music on my profile so everyone knew that I knew really hip underground songs. I could change the layout to any format. At one point I had only a profile picture and a comment box. I did that purely so that they couldn’t turn off the fantastic music, whilst they messaged me about the previous Saturday night out with the lads, down at the park, drinking white lightening and throwing up in fountains. But now I feel obligated to add every promoter and DJ in the world.”
“I add maybe two or three music industry related people a day on Facebook because I want to know what’s going on. It started out when a local promoter added me and I thought, great ill know what parties to hit on fresher’s week. It got out of hand very quickly. I became obsessed with adding anyone remotely involved in any event, anywhere. As great as it is being the first to know the release date of every band in the world’s new album, every club night happening in Brazil and what time guest list closes for every strip club south of Uganda, it is severely crushing my social life. Isn’t that the exact opposite of what social media should be?”
Housemate Ben Gibbon said this on the subject “Richard? Oh yeah, he spends most of his time complaining that we don’t invite him to parties and gigs but its because we see on Facebook he’s already heading to a party in Dubai or some shit and think, well, maybe its best not to invite him as he is busy. Everyone knows if you click attending to an event on Facebook, that is 100% what you are doing that night. He committed his time elsewhere and we don’t want him to put a dampener on his international reputation by inviting him out to watch the Chelsea game at the pub. He lost his girlfriend because she saw him like a page called Strippers, Escorts and Gremlins. That was for some weird club in Japan. But who am I to judge I once put down the name ben d cock on an event page.”
“I just feel like I have no friends left you know” sobbed Richard, as a bit of snot falls into his freshly brewed cup of tea, with 8 sugars. “It’s too late now to stop adding people and click attending to these parties because I’ll feel like I’m letting them down, they rely on me to bring in crowds.”
“I just wish it was the same as it used to be you know. MySpace had it all and I pine for its return to glory. Until then however, I have to add resident DJ’s in a small club in Huddersfield this week. Next week I might take a tour of Guilford on Google maps to see if there are any clubs I can annoy.”
