No, that book didn't change your life: Five most annoying trends on Facebook in 2014

You can scream all you want about how Facebook is bad for privacy but the truth is that for most of its one billion users, this is their daily source of fun. Sure we all talked about how awesome 'Ello' -- the new ad-free social network– was, but seriously even they have a Facebook page now. Our activities on Facebook have shown no signs of slowing down, and while Candy Crush requests might no longer be flooding your notifications, some annoying trends are still big on Facebook. We take a look at five trends that were the rage on Facebook and why we hope they don’t return in 2015. The Book List Challenge [caption id=“attachment_1839195” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”]  Facebook Screen Grab[/caption] This definitely was the highlight of our Facebook lives in 2014. Like all FB trends it’s hard to know how or when or who started this but pretty soon the ‘Top ten books’ was the one thing that occupied everyone’s news feed and timelines. The idea: Write down ten book titles that you loved and which changed your lives and then tag three other friends to do the same. Sure there were spin-offs like top ten games, top ten Bollywood songs, but books were the biggest feature of this trend. This was basically an exercise to show off how you had read a big and serious author and names like Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre, Marquez etc dominated. Chicken Soup for the Soul was not going to win you the admiration of your Facebook friends. Sure Harry Potter might have won in the end but still it was irritating to watch people go on about how books and their lives. As you scanned through you some of the lists, you couldn’t help but snort in derision at the pretentiousness of some of the lists that were circulating especially when you knew the reading habits of the people posting them. As someone rightly pointed on Facebook the viral lists demanded only one question: Why should they care? Let’s hope this doesn’t return in another form in 2015. [caption id=“attachment_1839221” align=“aligncenter” width=“650”]  Facebook screen grab[/caption] Click-bait headlines This was clearly a menace on Facebook with some publishing sites relying on headlines like “She just had a baby and here’s the tough choice she had to take next. You need to listen to her story because oh it’s so brave and sad, (mostly sad).” Or ‘Watch how this kid fought bullying in a totally, hip and innovative way.’ Ok I might be making up that those headlines, but with the rising number of websites that want to put out “viral content”, click-bait headlines have flooded our Facebook feed. Upworthy-style headlines which don’t really give a sense of what the story is all about, are very very popular. And it’s not just they who are doing this. From ScoopWhoop, StoryPick to pretty much everyone wants to tease their content on Facebook without giving you a clearer sense of what the story is about. In a lot of cases, the posts are just YouTube videos with completely misleading headlines. I remember this was mostly how spam was spread on Facebook, with a hint of porn and titles like “You won’t believe what this girl did in her high-school party.” Now these headlines have spread to legitimate content and it is frustrating at times. The problem is that the content is nowhere as great as the headline seems to be suggesting. Thankfully even Facebook took note of these and decided that it would show less and less of content that has click-bait headlines but see little engagement from users. The ALS Challenge [caption id=“attachment_1839201” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”]  Screen grab from video[/caption] We live in viral times and the ALS challenge was an example of how the collective powers of social media can be used for a good. The ALS ice-bucket challenge called for people to douse themselves in icy-cold water, challenge three other friends or else donate $100 money to the ALS foundation, which is helping to fight the battle against the disease. While it was fun to watch celebrities and tech czars take part in the challenge and yes, they donated money too, pretty soon it degenerated into something far more self-righteous and annoying. And that was before Daler Mehndi took the challenge in what looked like his living room. First, there was the whole argument about whether people in developed countries should really be wasting water. (Oh please it’s a bucket and Third World countries aren’t exactly the standard bearers for water conservation) Second, debates around whether we should really be spending so much money on this one disease when we have malaria and TB-killing people. Because linking two completely unrelated things is totally logical. Then of course there was the point how people didn’t even know what ALS was. For those with short-term memories, ALS or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord that causes total paralysis and eventual death. What killed the fun in this trend was that it was supposed to be for awareness, was quickly converted into a larger-than-life debate. Hashtags [caption id=“attachment_1839203” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”]  Facebook Screen Grab[/caption] #Loveyougirls #Girl’sNight #Makeup #MyBeauties #PretendingtolikethesebitchesbutItrulyhatethem #OhmygodIneedanotherhashtag #LookHowHappymylifeis If you’ve not seen a post like this on Facebook (ok some of the hashtags are exaggerated) I’m extremely jealous of you because you clearly have sensible friends on Facebook. Hashtags are the one trend that won’t go away on Facebook anytime soon. With the rise of a new-selfie-driven world order, where Instagram is the king, hashtags are now a compulsory feature of all Facebook posts that involve more than one person. The selfie quality might not always be good, but that doesn’t mean you can fill the post with hashtags. And given that wedding season is about to start in India, prepare for more of these as chic upper and upper middle-class men and women attend the big-fat-Indian-weddings in their bejewelled outfits. Selfies from #Sangeet, #Cocktail, #Mehendi #TheDaybeforeMehendi #DinneronedaybeforeWedding #Wedding #Reception #Postwedding will flood your timeline. It will be a good way to figure out how many wedding events a person has had. Which character are you quizzes [caption id=“attachment_1839207” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”]  Facebook Screen Grab[/caption] Don’t lie, you’ve played these quizzes on Facebook and posted the results with a little ‘Hehe’ before them or a sad face if you were disappointed by the result. You’ve probably even re-taken the quiz and jiggled the answers to get a character you wanted. In fact as this Gawker report points out one of the most popular pieces of content on Facebook in September was “Which Badass woman were you from your past life?” Quizzes about which Friends character, or which Harry Potter character or which Hogwarts House you should have belonged to, were all very, very popular. What wasn’t so much fun was watching people paste the results on Facebook with their little exclamation marks in the post. The answers to all of these quizzes was of course only one: None of the above. You were not any of the characters in Friends, despite what the quiz may have said. Don’t kid yourself, your hair was never as good as Rachel’s.