Facebook updates: What kind do you write?

After using Facebook for a while, you notice that people tend to say the same things over and over in their status updates.

Sean Is Hungry, Chris Is Tired



Our lives may be full, and our experiences rich, but when it comes to squeezing the latest mini-chapters of our personal journeys into the limited space of a Facebook status update -- with the added pressures of being clever, looking cool, sounding interesting, and eliciting responses -- there are only so many ways to tell the folks on our social networks all about it. You begin see the same stuff over and over again: "Sean is hungry". "Chris is tired". "Ann is in a boring meeting". "Bob had a crazy dream". "Jane needs to study".

English professors claim that there are relatively few distinct story plots, and that every piece of literature is just a retelling of one of those narrative archetypes. I'm convinced that the same is true of the things people write in their Facebook status updates. On the following pages you'll meet some of the most common "archetypes" I've recorded so far.

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