TIME Hates Facebook's 25 Things Meme

In another one of those items that Gawker always derides as "trend pieces", TIME Magazine's Claire Suddath takes on the latest Facebook meme, that "25 Things About Me" bit that so many of you have done. And she hates it.

Facebook's "25 Things About Me" meme seems harmless enough; people write 25 facts about themselves and post them on their Facebook pages, just as they do with videos, status updates and photos of last weekend's party. An estimated 5 million of these notes — that's 125 million facts — have appeared on the website within the past week. Assuming it takes someone 10 minutes to come up with their list, this recent bout of viral narcissism has sent roughly 800,000 hours of worktime productivity down the drain.

But it's just so stupid. Most people aren't funny, they aren't insightful, and they share way too much. Facebook is a loose social network; a "friend" on Facebook might translate to someone you'd barely recognize in real life. I don't care that my college roommate's sister is anemic or that my stepcousin's boyfriend gets nervous around old people (apparently he's afraid they're going to die). I can't believe I'm saying this, but I've finally found something more stupid than Twitter.

Back in the early days of this here website thingy, the blogosphere version was "100 Things About Me', which I suppose says something about the limited attention span of Facebookers. Unless it doesn't. Anyway, I was ahead of these abbreviated times because I only posted 50 items. Here's the post if you want to go look at it. (Two of my 50 items are no longer true.)