So, at the end of my last column, I stated that I was starting a Facebook group called "It's Not Valentine's Day, It's Singles Awareness Day."
One of my editors thought it would be a great idea. Unite single people all over the world, or at least Trumbull County, to share their Valentine's Day horror stories. Want to know what it has gathered? A bunch of high school kids who just join Facebook groups all day.
Apparently, with the future Zone generation, becoming "fans" of things all day is all the rage. And I'm not talking about being fans of a sport team or a certain actor, I'm talking about things that happen in our everyday, normal lives, that people are now fans of doing.
I think I first scratched my head about Facebook fan pages when I saw the page titled "I'm not yelling, I'm Italian... That's how we talk." It might be the truth, but to be a "fan" of that? I guess this is what the world is coming to.
So, back to my anti-Valentine's Day fan page. Either people didn't want to join my page, people don't have Facebook or people really like Valentine's Day a lot more than I thought. Either way, only 78 people have become fans of my page over the last two weeks, and 50 percent of them have had their driver's license for less than two years.
I'm not upset because my loyal readers didn't become fans of my created Facebook page. I'm upset because the Facebook fan page titled "I hate it when I get comfortable and realize I forgot to turn off the light" has 155,419 fans.
I'm a competitive person. What can I say?
See, I always thought of myself as a fan of certain things. I'm a fan of the Cleveland Browns (don't know why), country music (come on, people, I'm from Champion) and Italian food (yummy). I have also in recent weeks became a fan of curling (watch out for me in 2014). But I didn't realize that I could be a "fan" of "Finding a bruise or cut on your body and not knowing how you got it."
All these quirky little groups, I will admit, are things that I either A.) find myself doing, B.) know I've done in the past or C.) have found very, very funny.
I mean, these pages range from titles such as "When you drink water with mint gum it seems colder" to "Sleeping." So yeah, the mint gum thing is true, and who isn't a fan of sleeping? Seriously. I'm a huge fan of it, but apparently I'm not a true fan until Facebook says so.
Sadly enough, I've been thinking about everyday things that I do / don't like and I'm going to create fan pages for those things to see if it generates more of a response. Like, maybe people can become fans of "Hating when the top of your foot itches and you have shoes on." I bet that would get a huge response.
Or maybe for the winter I can start the fan base for, "I don't use a scraper. I just turn on the defrost and wait 10 minutes." I know that one would generate some fandom.
Here's one for us Zone age people. We can become fans of "When I went roller skating, we actually skated. And there were four wheels on our skates." Or maybe, "It's Friday night. Where you want to go? Perkins. Duh." Or last, but certainly not least, "When I was young, I didn't have Hannah Montana. I had Kelly Kapowski."
Here is the moral to my story. Remember, the actual definition of the word "fan" (from the word fanatic) is an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc. It says nothing about everyday actions or things that happen in the school hallway.
However, if people insist of still becoming fans of things like, "I wonder if British people sit around and talk in American accents," more power to them. But come on people, I would really like "It's Not Valentine's Day, It's Singles Awareness Day," to have more fans than the pickle, which is trying to get more fans than Nickelback. I'm more popular than a pickle, right?