The 6 Most Obnoxious (And Unavoidable) Facebook Groups

When Facebook emerged on the scene in early 2004, it was the plucky young challenger to big bad MySpace. Over time, Facebook has risen to dominance by offering its users a far longer list of ways to annoy their friends to the point of physical violence.

The worst of the annoyance techniques has to be the copious and utterly pointless group invites which come standard with any account. You may recognize them as...

Why You Invited Us:

Human beings thrive on familiarity. It's a big warm blanket in a cold, scary world. We've been using the Facebook we know and love for years, and now they went and changed it! Join this group to force them to change it back and keep it that way forever!

Why We Unfriended You:

For starters, you haven't been using Facebook as you now know it for years. It has evolved constantly in that time, and each innovation has been treated as a crisis, causing the community to descend on Mark Zuckerberg's e-house like it was Frankenstein's mansion.

Or, at least, to swear to never use Facebook again.

Of course, you came to accept all those changes with time, maybe even came to enjoy some of them. But more importantly from Facebook's point of view, you're not going anywhere and they know it.

So for the seven people from this group that actually do stop using Facebook, there will be 100,000 new profiles created... today.

Why You Invited Us:

The whole internet social networking phenomenon came about thanks to modern man's almost pathological need for attention. Also, among Facebook users there is still a large demographic of college-age males who will risk life and limb just to finally get someone to look at them.

"A million members and I'm gonna drink this semen!"

Why We Unfriended You:

First of all, we're probably not getting this invite from the actual guy offering to do the stunt. No, far more likely, it's coming from somebody else, spreading the gospel of Billy: The guy who will fuck a goat. We guess everybody needs something to believe in.

"999,999 people joined. Holy shit this is on. This is so on."

Now, we admit we're mildly amused by the thought of a guy whose parents are spending thousands of dollars on his education say, setting fire to his grundle hair at the urging of enough strangers.

But we all know that none of these groups actually end with the stunt being performed. Our attention whore who started the whole thing knew he'd never hit that ludicrous target and was just hoping to get an "Oh, you're so silly," and a good-natured pat from the cute girl down the hall he's too scared to actually start a real conversation with.

"Here, take my card. I almost drank semen."

But even if he was willing, it's still asking us to earn our internet entertainment. Handing out Facebook invites isn't a lot of effort, granted, but it sure is a lot less to just click on over to thousands of existing videos on YouTube of dudes trying to ramp their dirtbike off the roof of their house.

That's the way it should work; you put out the effort, then we decide if you're worth the attention. Now grab the peanut butter and the camera, and climb into the lion's cage. How else will you ever get people to like you?

Why You Invited Us:

The world we live in today is filled with bad things. You might have heard about this on the news. So when a little invitation pops up for a group preaching awareness and compassion over the latest horror to inflict itself on humanity, it feels good to click "Accept." Inviting others to do the same feels even better.

You're part of the solution.

"I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna save Africa."

Why We Unfriended You:

No, you're not.

"I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna watch Gossip Girl on Hulu.

While there are people out there who put in huge amounts of their spare time and energy for these causes, there are far more whose commitment to Darfur ends at "Send Invitations."

It's not helping. It's the opposite. It's what people do to alleviate the guilt of not helping while continuing to not help. Once you've sent the invite on to enough people to feel like you've done your good deed, you move on to drawing penises on your friends' graffiti walls.

It's like the social networking version of Live Earth. How many of the people in attendance were there because they wanted to save the environment, and how many were simply jumping at the opportunity to look like they cared while seeing top musicians for free (or in some cases the opportunity to be baked enough to pretend they weren't watching Akon gyrating with no shirt on)?

And if you do decide to get up and actually donate to a good cause, please, please don't start one of these...