FATEBOOK

I’m setting up a social networking site called FATEBOOK, a new online space where you can get together and chatter away, post pictures of yourselves doing dynamic things and generally make out like you’re all well adjusted and successful. ‘Hit the gym before work then closed a sweet deal’. ‘Saw a darling pair of Jimmy Choos going for a song, soooooo happy.’ ‘Check out my beautiful and intelligent children enjoying a party in the spacious/tasteful décor of our family home where we live with our good genes.’ Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

As disciples of the mutually alienating façade, I’m sure you’ll enjoy availing of this opportunity to keep up with the Joneses to the nth degree. Come to Fatebook and sell yourselves to each other like pieces of Tupperware. Human Tupperware. Insincere Tupperware. You’ll all be so busy showing everyone who hated you in school how great your life is these days that you’ll not take the time to ponder why I have gathered you all one place. There is a reason. One reason and one reason only.
. . .I’m turning on the gas.

‘But Mr. Fugger, why do you hate us so?’ I hear you ask and I’ll tell you: I hate you because you have chosen perception over reality, because you communicate in a manner more suited to a PR company than a human-being, because you make out like you want to socialise but you really want to make each other feel alone, because your aspirations are adapted from tacky commercials for toothpaste, life insurance and automobiles, because you degrade the facility for genuine human communication and instead embrace a dead eyed demon with a rictus grin called consumption. Finally, and most of all, I hate you because you are boring me to death.

‘Why is the site called Fatebook Mr. Fugger?’ I hear you asking now and I’ll tell you this too. As lord and ruler of Fatebook, I have possession of the Ultimate Control Panel (UCP). Like all Fatebookers, I’ll be able to send a smiley, nudge, poke, tickle and do all the other things users can do (and will do, ad nauseam) but my UCP will also offer me an exclusive extra option, the Destroy option. I’ll be checking out the exhibitionist little displays and updates of your pseudo-lives and, when you have roused my ire to a sufficient extent, I’ll click on ‘Destroy’.

Fatebook will possess occult properties (you’ll be able to tell from the little pentagrams and goat head symbols that litter the interface) and these properties will enable me to place curses upon users. You’ll spot the cursed Fatebookers when you notice their pages slowly transforming into catalogues of disaster. Pages, that once portrayed contrived exuberance, will chart personal failings, insecurities and admissions of dishonesty. Eventually, I’ll destroy every single one of you until you are united in humility. The only way to transcend this humility will be via honesty, mutual understanding and genuine empathy.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘I’m not signing up to his social network’ but you will, believe me. The lure will be too sweet. The chance to passively, indirectly but effectively thumb your noses at each other and make out you're something you’re not will be too irresistible to ones as petty and relentlessly egotistical as yourselves. The image of yourselves as beaming charity paragliders (or whatever persona you’ve selected) will fracture and the truth will come pouring out the cracks like wonderful puke. It’ll be for your own good. Your fate will be in my hands. DESTROY!

In other news: check the RDC update! A delightful 3 Page Origin story from All Rise.