Best Funny Tag Groups on Facebook
Quitting Facebook? You'll Miss Out on Hilariously Subversive Culture
Weird Facebook and tag groups are the relief we all need
I am way late to the Weird Facebook scene, but damn am I glad I've discovered it. Between the cat groups and the tag groups, I have found a new joy in online life.
Like a lot of people, I've wished many times I could leave Facebook — my feed is a depressing scroll of fascism, stupidity, and the occasional animal cruelty "awareness" photo (WHY DO YOU SHARE THESE?!?!), alternating with fundraising pleas and passive aggressive shade memes. Unfortunately, my reasons for continued existence are cats and horses, and my local horse community communicates exclusively through FB.
I hate it, but I just. can't. quit it.
I got invited to the Weird Facebook party through the massive publicity (okay, the copypasta-type articles on Buzzfeed, Bored Panda, and Woke Sloth) around A Group Where We Pretend to be Boomers, where "millennials" (disclosure: I'm Gen X) post mimicking, hilariously close to real life messages and images in the style of Boomers on social media. All kinds of all-caps, dot-dot-dots, and inappropriate-emoji use.
From there, I joined a group where we pretend to be men mansplaining facts to women, which isn't so much funny as it is infuriating, and has turned out to be a surprisingly woke feminist space. And then it cascaded, as I browsed through the comments: That's it, I'm font shaming; things that didn't happen, but were entertaining to read, so I don't mind; those are certainly all words; White People™; and on and on and on. As many groups as I'm in, I see a dozen more tagged in the comments. (My favorite lately is sounds like you're a Ferengi but okay, which warms my Federation-loving heart.)
These groups are used much as memes are: as reactions to something someone else has posted. They're often in this conversational style of "sounds like X, but okay", or "thanks i hate it", or "Have you tried dying mad?", so that you just post the title of the group name in your comment, and it serves double duty: making that specific comment, as well as letting everyone know that there's a whole group that exists just to call people out for crossing a cultural line (whether minor or major).
What I love about these groups is what I loved about the fictional reviews that popped up on Amazon for the "Bic for Her" pens: that people have used (subverted, even) a platform over which they have very little administrative control to embark in extended cultural discussion. With my academic hat on, I've called these "dissonant fabulations": they use nonfiction spaces (like social media, product reviews, chat forums) for fictional narratives or identities (satirical reviews, fake personas) that inspire questions about ourselves, our culture, and our world.
Most of them don't even mean to. The guy who created the Customer Service account to deliver snark to Target customers ranting about any of their gender-neutral initiatives (and inspired others to continue the tradition for other pages) didn't do it for as lofty a goal as "inspiring question about our culture". He just did it to troll people he saw as bass-ackwards bigots — it was pot-stirring humor.
Weird Facebook and tag groups aren't always intentionally "woke". They aren't actively activist. But the pretend-Boomer group? Many posts tar Boomers with MAGA-loving bigots, and a lot of discussion ensues. The mansplaining group is least often comical, and far more often a "safe space" where women can express their frustrations about men (including men who are very close to them).
Groups like sounds like you're a Ferengi but okay convey a ton of info just in the title: tagging someone with this group link is calling them not only a sexist pig, but a narrow-minded, gold-digging capitalist sexist pig. It requires at least a passing familiarity with geek culture, too, enough to know what an insult it is to label non-Ferengis Ferengi. And that "but okay" at the end? That's internet for side-eyed snark, a diminutive for "weird flex but okay". It's an expression of tolerance, even for the intolerable.
Tag groups' subversive nature applies to FB's platform as well as individual posts. Zuckerberg wants groups to be the Next Big Thing, but only in the ways he envisions; his capitalist utopian mindset failed to predict how users would twist his platform into a social commentary free-for-all. FB doesn't promote these groups the way they do other "community" or business-based groups; rather, they are prone to "zuccing", or getting shut down for inappropriate use (often as a result of spurious misconduct reporting).
Doesn't stop them from proliferating, obvs. Doesn't stop them popping up over and over, and spreading like wildfire; nothing drives subversive rebels more than acting against "the man". Which delights me to my core. Facebook was supposed to make it easier to find my people, and it did. Much to my depression. Now I've been able to find more of my people, my snark nation, and Of all the things that happened, this happen't the most.
Source: https://medium.com/swlh/quitting-facebook-youll-miss-out-on-hilariously-subversive-culture-837e46eb69fb
0 Response to "Best Funny Tag Groups on Facebook"
Post a Comment