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| pic: wikimedia commons |
Hundreds of Facebook users reportedly clogged up the
Facebook Team’s complaints and queries service inbox this morning, after
unanimously voicing concerns over the sudden and inexplicable increase in the
number of giraffes on Facebook.
“I opened up my newsfeed this morning, and
suddenly I saw that all my human friends had suddenly become giraffes,” said
23-year-old Rhodes student and hater of stupid fucking reposted riddles about what you would open first if your parents came over to your house at 3am, Derrick
Anderson. “What is this bullshit?”
The complaints threw the Facebook
investigative team into immediate action. However, the scale of the mystery has
left them stumped and dazed.
“Right now, we just don’t know why this is
happening,” said Head of Complaints Resolution for Facebook Ree Pears. “It
could be Black Magick, transamorgraphying them into animals by way of voodoo
and the dark arts. Or it could be a sophisticated hack. It might even be some
sort of transcendant expression of our users' inner animal, the power of
forgotten gods and ancestors making themselves known in the most public way
possible.”
He went on to add, however, that it definitely couldn’t be because of
a stupid riddle.
“Correlation isn’t the same as causality,” said Pears. “We’re
fairly confident that our users aren’t so mindless that they would A) fall for
such a daft word puzzle and B) actually go through with changing their profile
picture after failing this incredible flawed and at the same time very easy
challenge.”
Meanwhile, professors studying language at Universities across the
world have expressed their outrage at the events.
“We’re concerned that there
will be a giraffe monopoly on Facebook,” said the Rhodes University Dean of
Students Div ke Vlerk in a statement this morning. “At Rhodes, we’re total
supporters of an animal multiplicity, and as such we advise students to please
upload pictures of goats, lions, carnivores, scavengers diurnal and nocturnal
animals, be they mammal or reptile or aquatic, in the interest of equal
representation and diversity.”
Meanwhile, professors from the English
departments of various tertiary institutes have complained at the riddle.
“It’s
just too flawed to consider. I mean, why the hell would your parents be coming
over at 3am?” said Dean of Humanities Jay Entprix. “The only reason anyone
would feasibly suggest that sort of eventuality would be an in the event of an emergency
of some kind, in which case why would you offer them wine or jam or cheese? And
what kind of fucking cheese comes in a bottle or jar? They’re your parents, so
presumably you wouldn’t offer them the cheap squeezey-cheese? And of course, if
you wake up first the answer is ‘Your Eyes’, but what if you’re lying in bed
comprehending the simple meaninglessness of the entire universe as outlined in
theories of existentialism or nihilism? In that case, your eyes are already
open and you’ll open the door first – unless they had their own key, or you
live in a house with no doors or an open-plan vista that limits private
enclosure.”
He shook his head before breaking off and adding that you could
probably see his point so he wouldn’t bore you any further.
“Also, what if
you’re not home?” he said. “None of these potential factors are even suggested
at in this over-simplistic riddle.”
In spite of all this the Facebook Team is
adamant that they will get to the bottom of this.
“Right now we’re programming
and ‘Automatic Friend Spring-clean’ function to Facebook that will use your
webcam and microphone to track your sarcastic eye-rolls and groans of ‘fuck,
come on,’ or ‘god, I hate you’ and so on and so forth,” said Pear. “Currently we’re automatically adding anyone with a Giraffe in their profile picture to
that list. One click, and you’ll never have to read that shit again.”
The group
of Facebook experts has already made a
page outlining these plans – a page that has garnered over 700 million likes
since its creation.
“We’re sure this is a feature everyone will love,” said
Pears. “Except, of course, that bastard Reggie at Toys ‘R Us.”
