Facebook fan pages are out of control

   Click here to become a fan of ‘I Hate Meaningless, Irrelevant and Pointless Fan Pages!’” No, Facebook, I will not become a fan of this.
   The irony alone is enough to eradicate the faint glimmer of hope that my generation might be doing something useful with their lives, but even more pathetic are the 157 fans who are completely content with publicly expressing their own hypocrisy.
   Fan pages could have been an interesting feature of Facebook. Maybe they could have been a more creative way to express and discuss one’s interests and influences.
   But all these fan pages really do is fan the flames of excessive Facebook users, whose numbers are growing rapidly.
   I’m not saying that I don’t watch raindrops race down the car window or hear songs that remind me of people or mourn Pluto’s revoked planet-hood. I just don’t feel the need to confirm the fact that I agree with several hundred strangers on these issues.
   The “Really? No way, me too!” mentality frustrates me, especially since Facebook already validates my feelings when all my friends “like” my statuses. Does it really matter if other people wonder why Mr. Krabs’ daughter is a whale? Isn’t that an obvious question anyway? And why should I feel the need to declare my own curiosity by “becoming a fan?”
   Of course, if you’ve seen Facebook lately, “becoming a fan” is old news. Now Facebookers are offered to “like” those hundreds of pages instead.
   It’s unfortunate that they can now only express mild agreement instead of enjoying the connotation of obsession that comes with being a “fan.”
   Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against the people who do this. It’s the way of thinking that annoys me.
   Must there be a fan page for every mindless and obvious thought that goes through people’s heads? For every immature joke, for every cheesy song quote?
   Worse yet, do you notice what some of the creators of these pages say? They flood the already-pointless page with irrelevant posts like “how was everyone’s day?” or “the 100th comment on this status wins!”
   It makes me question the reasons this bored Facebook user felt the need to create a page. Could it really be nothing more than a sad attempt at gathering the mass companionship of a group of distant Facebook strangers?
   Maybe that’s a stretch, but either way there are certainly better ways to spend time than joining purposeless fan pages or begging for attention by creating them.
   There are even, dare I say, better uses of time within Facebook itself, such as a conversation with a friend from the real world rather than an impersonal column of comments posted by hundreds of “friends” from the World Wide Web.
   It seems like with each new feature, Facebook becomes less a way to communicate with friends and more a way to waste time by playing games and socializing with complete strangers.
   All I ask of Facebook users is that they examine the heaping pile of fan pages listed on their profiles, read a few mindless comments on some of them and ask themselves how much they actually care about what these strangers are saying.
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   Paul Doyle, a senior, is a Gazette staff writer.