Have You Been Facesquatting?

Yes, Facesquatting: proportionally, the dirtiest term possible for the most inane thing it could be applied to, which, in this case, is taking a Facebook user name that’s not yours. And now it’s a hysterical, brainless internet meme.

The story behind the term, coined by blogger Anil Dash goes something like this: on Friday night, Facebook started allowing people to have “usernames” on the site to allow people more direct access to your (more individualised) profile by having a distinct URL (i.e. “facebook.com/yourname”). Unfortunately, the username is permanent. But not unfortunately, because hilarity ensues. Thus, the internerds found a new cute way to mess with each other by “squatting” on certain names. You could be like this young man, who chose something slightly less refined than his actual name to fit his profile.

Anyway. This is is DESTROYING FRIENDSHIPS, too. Take, for example, this young fellow, who decided it would be cute to take his friend’s name.

So sad. Outrage! And hilarity. Anyway: Facebook is still fun, sometimes. I was going to do this to my profile but then realised that the change was permanent, though if any of you take it and put a silly picture up, I’ll give you $US5.