Monday 17 March 2008

Facing up to a Fakebook disaster

Who has the biggest party hangover today?  A young lady called Sarah Ruscoe who has become a victim of a style of networking I'm calling "Fakebooking".  Community sites like Facebook have made listing friends a competitive sport.  Which is how it was possible for Sarah to invite 300 "fake mates" and 200 virtual acquaintances to her 18th birthday party.  What she didn't bargain on was how quickly word would spread.  The Guardian reports today how a combination of a poster about the party at a local Grammar school and details about it on MySpace, school bulletin boards and Facebook, attracted 2000 teenage revellers to the posh pile.  Sarah's parents were powerless as their place received a anarchic trashing of punk-worthy proportions.  The birthday girl's mum Rebecca seems far too posh for rhyming slang, but I am sure she will agree that the evening went truly "Pete Tong" following the shout-out on Tong's Radio 1 show mentioning the function among the cool places to be that night.  Oops.

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