"My friend Tom seems to be very popular on MySpace," said Dr. Gruff. "I don't remember having him in class, but this new media will help me connect in a new way."

by Matthew Michael
Freelance Writer

Dean of Students Charles S. Gruff was finally ready to join the social media revolution and get better connected to his students at Gaightes College. His enthusiasm waned quickly, though, when he joined MySpace and could not find any students there.

“My staff has spent the last five years telling me to get with the program and join some social networking sites, but I kept telling them this fad would pass,” said Gruff. “Obviously, I was wrong.”

Feeling sheepish about admitting his change of heart to his subordinates, Gruff started digging through his files of printed emails from 2005 to find out more about social networking sites.

“I remembered getting a lot about this stuff back in the 05-06 school year. Good thing I print and file all my emails or I would never have found the invitation a student sent me in October that year to join MySpace. I don’t think MySpace would’ve let me in without it.”

Gruff expressed some nervousness about whether the student would still remember him.

“I just hoped she would still feel comfortable with me visiting her space.”

Dean Gruff never got the chance to make the student uncomfortable. When he joined MySpace and typed in the invitation code, the message he received was anything but social: User not found.

“This is ridiculous!” Gruff exclaimed. “There’s no one here. The only friend I’ve made is some guy named Tom. I have a friend request from one student, but I don’t even recognize the name. Have you ever seen ‘Sarah’ spelled with three Xs?”

“It’s a rookie mistake,” Assistant Dean of Students Sherry O’Brady said of her boss’s frustrations. “But I’m glad he’s finally trying to meet students where they’re at – or, at least where they once were.”

Technology experts at the Galveston Institute of Technology (GIT) have made significant advances in the search for empirical proof of true love. In collaboration with GIT’s department of interpersonal psychology, the following data will be published soon in Emotiscience Monthly.

According to Dr. Guillermo Ovechkin, “While we haven’t found evidence of true love, we have narrowed down the key indicators that show absence of true love.” Those include:

• A partner who indicates a status of “single” or no status at all.
• A partner who does not reciprocate wall posts on at least a 2 post to 1 post ratio.
• A partner who does not reciprocate the emotional tone of a status update. Example: Partner 1 says “I had the most romantic time of my life last night” while Partner 2 posts “Have you ever puked in your sock drawer? FML, lolz.”

Psychology undergraduate Jamie Winderland finds the evidence less than convincing. “This is crap. My boyfriend and I have an awesome relationship, and he never writes anything about me. He’s just shy about telling anyone we’re a couple. I try to make up for that by posting twice as many pictures and comments about how in love we are.”

“We’re convinced that we’ll find more evidence of true love as we search deeper,” says Dr. Ovechkin. “Unfortunately, this stupid new Live Feed feature makes us want to quit Facebook and teach it a lesson.”

Freshman Pamela Roggins of Sunshine State University in Boca Raton, FL, set a new world record this week by writing her 34,077^th Facebook wall post stating some version of “Facebook is boring.”

Among her famous posts are these masterpieces:

• Yaaaawn. FB is sooooooo stuuuuupid.

• Ppl who use FB all the time are loosers.

• This is so laem. Kewl people don’t do fb anymore, peeps.

• Im going to hold my breth until facebook goes back to it’s old look. Dosn’t matter tho. Fb is stoopid anyways.

Congratulations, Pamela!

by Irma Voigt
Staff Writer

Slacktivism reached an all time in high in January 2010, according to a report released by the National Center for Non-Service Research. Not to be confused with actual activism, slacktivism is the notion that people make a difference through passive means without actually contributing anything of substance to a cause.

Trends indicated an unusual spike in slacktivism in early January, attributed to a Facebook meme encouraging women to post the color of their bras as their statuses.

“I thought it was the New Years resolutioners” said Herman Kimball, founder of the Center. “They’re all inspired to make a difference at the beginning of the year. I never could have anticipated that it would continue to grow.”

After an earthquake rocked the small island nation of Haiti in mid-January, slacktivism numbers again increased, shattering all previous records.

“I couldn’t sit around feeling like I wasn’t helping,” said Ginger Rasphine, a student at Craigley University in Montana.

Rasphine reported that she planted and harvested more than 200 plots of white corn, a limited edition crop offered the popular Facebook application Farmville. To be eligible to access the crop, users donated 25 dollars or more of Farmville cash, a cyber currency earned for attaining new levels within the game.

“I’d been saving up for a mystery box,” Rasphine said, “But this seemed like a better use. I’m glad the people of Haiti will have something to eat now.”

A slacktivism scandal emerged when many discovered that a text message sent to the Red Cross charged a ten dollar donation to their own cellular phone bill rather than donating the money of a celebrity.

“Ten dollars is a lot,” said Taylor Reid, a student at Teakwood College. “My parents pay my cell phone bill and they’re going to be pissed.” Reid said he thought he was donating Wyclef Jean’s money and was more comfortable with that.

“It’s difficult to predict if this trend will continue,” said Kimball. “It really depends on what natural disasters may be coming down the pipe or what memes circulate. I have a lot of hope that 2010 is going to be a big year for slacktivists.”

Administrators at universities across the United States are basking in their own hipness this year as thousands of new Facebook groups have emerged to represent their departments and events.

“The freshmen really think we’re cool,” said James Pollens, director of admissions for Angelica Community College in Utah. “We’ve had over fifteen students join our ‘Proud to be Angelica Angels’ group this summer. Over four hundred of them started their own group called ‘Partying Hell’s Angels’ since then, so we feel like we’ve really helped start a trend instead of following one.”

“We haven’t had any new students join our ‘We Don’t Have to Drink to Have Fun’ group yet,” admitted health counselor Amy Ghelf from Woodwright University, “but we do have about fifteen loyal administrators who joined.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” assures Amy’s supervisor. “Students just love anything that’s on a computer, so we’re confident our healthy message will spread rapidly once the first few find us.”