From March 2010:
There are bystanders everywhere as they look at a fight that just broke out. The word travels fast through the hallways as people try and figure out who is fighting. The question on everyone’s mind is why were they fighting?
Boasting over 200 million active users worldwide, Facebook has quickly become the most popular internet site. The ability to know someone without really knowing them has enticed many to become active users. The new version of Facebook recently released has allowed for a quicker, easier newsfeed. Allowing others to delve into the personal lives of their peers.
Facebook has also quickly become an inevitable forum for cyberbullying and instigation. Within the past year, people have been taking their problems in school and transferring them to a mass social networking site and making it public to everyone. Whatever a user posts, it immediately enters the newsfeed of all their Facebook friends.
At the center of Facebook drama earlier in the school year was senior DerRonn Ball.
“My name was put in a letter which deeply troubled a large portion of the student body,” said Ball. “Upon learning of this note, I promptly addressed the issue at school and on Facebook.”
With Facebook’s instant news feed updating its users about any recent activity, it is much earlier to become a spectator of this cyber drama. Many now have front row seats as they watch the conflict between a few people unfold. Facebook gives them an instant play-by-play of what’s going on.
“I think putting your drama on Facebook is dumb,” said junior Elyssa Poretsky. “Some of us just can’t avoid it, but what’s even dumber is the fact that you have a fight on Facebook and then go beat up the person in real life over nothing.”
Despite the general consensus of people hashing out their problems over Facebook equating to immaturity, some continue to stir up conflict over the social networking site.
“When people see that they can get attention from something there is far more incentive to do whatever the action is,” said Ball. “No matter how bad or foul the act is, there is no such thing as bad publicity.”
For many, Facebook fights are pure entertainment, allowing people to have something to talk about the next day. As a result, many groups and fan pages have sprung up on Facebook dedicated to their enjoyment of reading Facebook fights. One fan page entitled I love reading F A C E B O O K fights as of March 4 has a base of almost 200,000 fans.
The fan page description reads, “Facebook Fights. Free Entertainment. Love it.”
“Boring night on Facebook tonight without any fights happening,” a recent page on the fan page read.
Chamblee has had its own groups, although not dedicated to the entertainment of Facebook fights, which resulted in a lot of conflicts, not only among Chamblee students but with students in other schools as well.
“Usually when things start happening on Facebook it’s verbal, but then it carries on to campus and becomes physical,” said disciplinary administrator Marcus Searcy. “We don’t try to control what you guys do on Facebook, but it inevitably comes back to the school.”
One such group is the 24/7 Roasting Session. The group encourages its members to say any joke that comes to mind about any member of the group. Upon hearing about people “going in” on each other that number of group members’ steadily increased as some who took extreme offense to the jokes that were being made about them argued back in defense.
“What entices me about Facebook fights is probably two things,” said Facebook drama spectator Jimmy Li. “One is my general boredom and second is my interest in other people’s lives. You may call me nosy because I am, but it’s very fun to see people acting like complete fools over Facebook because the people rarely do anything about it.”