The 8 Kinds Of Facebook Friends

1. The actual friends.

These are the people who actually factor into your life in a real way and don’t just exist on the periphery of your social media as a semi-nameless human shape that you occasionally invite to parties where you want a really good head count. These are real friends. You mostly utilize Facebook to post absurd links on one another’s walls and laugh at people in a healthy, mutual way. If you actually need to speak to one another, you’ll use your phones like grown-ass adults.

2. The humiliating family members.

Is any status complete without someone named Patti who spends most of her free time on Pinterest and tries to get lunch as often as possible with your mother leaving a completely unrelated comment about how she hopes you’re doing well and remembers when you were just a tiny little thing who frequently defecated in its pants! (Note that this comment must be left after several friends have commented so that they will be promptly notified of Patti’s entry into the discussion which you now must address with some measure of tact.) Once, a friend of mine went so far as to break the fourth wall and actually write, “Lol, family members on Facebook.” For this, we had to put him down. It was the only humane thing to do.

3. The guy who went to Southeast Asia.

It’s all just an Instagrammy blur of sunsets, foods being eaten out of banana leaves, impoverished children accompanied by hashtags of #blessed and #sobeautiful, and ranty statuses about how much they are learning from their time in #Paradise. Just let it wash over you like a frothing, humblebraggy sea. It’ll all be over soon.

4. The friends who have been replaced by pictures of their fetus.

I’m just going to say this. If the first thing the Spirit moves you to do, upon learning that you and your partner have conceived a brand-new life to be brought into the world whose whole existence is a blank slate of promise and hope, is make your Facebook profile picture a god damned ultrasound with fully visible genitals and all: Having children is a luxury that you are not quite ready to fulfill. You are not in any position to be making decisions about what to do with the social media presence of a fucking fetus, nor should you be foisting all of its sassy fetus opinions on all of your 600 closest friends. Let that child grow up and have its own terrible Facebook, and leave it its innocence.

5. The complete strangers.

You think you met them at a party one time, but you really can’t be sure. Maybe they got married at some point, but not even their first name is familiar. The next time you go on a late-night, righteously-indignant unfriending spree, they are going to be the first weeds to get indiscriminately pulled.

6. The people who are too hot to delete.

This is the complete stranger, except really good-looking. Inevitably, one day they are going to look through their own feed and realize that you are completely unknown to them, and that having you in their online presence brings absolutely nothing positive to their life, and they’ll delete you. But until that point, you will be lurking in the corners of their most deeply buried photo albums like a horny, sweaty Gollum, enjoying every last morsel of hotness that the Internet Gods have seen fit to bestow you with.

7. The hate-follows.

It’s like the social media version of meth. You know that the disdainful spite-scrolling is only raising your blood pressure, grinding your teeth down, and generally making you an overall worse person. But you just cannot stop yourself, and will pick your metaphorical skin into oblivion while you enjoy the sweet, sweet high that is observing someone else’s rage-inducing life decisions. You can feel your soul deteriorating from within, and wonder how much longer you can keep obfuscating the “aggressive” side on the passive-aggressive comments you like to leave, but you just can’t help yourself. Get out that laptop, Jesse, we need to cook.

8. The one who always chats you at the most inopportune times and you’re just like, “Come on….”

Come on, bro… This shit tells you when I’ve seen your message and everything… Mannnnnnnnnn……