Facebook Friends Bios

Recently I released biographies of all of my Facebook Friends characters on my Facebook page. I decided to keep a record of them here on my blog as well, so I've collected all of the posts from my Facebook page into this blog post for anyone who might want to come back and read them again. I will continue to update this post as long as I come up with new characters for the series.

The first two characters that I came up with were Joyful Exclamations and Rainbow Sunshine. They were partially inspired by my cousin and aunt, because they always have such positive attitudes on Facebook, unlike most of my characters. I wanted characters like them to balance out inevitable negativity that comes from... Well, a good 60-70% of the rest of the people on Facebook.

Joyful Exclamations - Never without a happy thought, Joyful is excited by everything. Especially coffee.

Rainbow Sunshine - Joyful’s mild mannered best friend. Also never without a happy thought, just less excitable.

One of my first ideas when I started thinking of writing a spoof of Facebook was to have a character who did nothing but "Like" everything. I know plenty of people who almost never post anything of their own, but it's obvious they are very active on Facebook, because you'll see that they have been actively liking every other post. Lurking Liker was the character I eventually came up with, and to this day she has never posted anything of her own, though she did briefly write a reply once, much to everyone else's shock.

Lurking Liker - Who is she? We’re not sure anyone knows…

One of the main things I noticed about people who post on Facebook, especially teenaged girls was how incredibly passive aggressive they could be. There were so many times when they would be complaining about how someone treated them, and many other times they wrote as if they were talking directly to this "Horrible person", but never naming names. From this I came up with the McDramaPants sisters.

Completely unrelated to that, I also invented a bratty little brother for them who I named after my brother's nephew, who always seemed very mischievous. :)

The McDramaPants Sisters - Everything is a tragedy, and everybody on Facebook needs to know about it. Just not the details.

Vaguely McDramaPants does her best to keep her life as open and as closed as possible, while Whiney McDramaPants just wants some sympathy. From everyone.

Gavin is the youngest McDramaPants. DO NOT leave your Facebook open around him…

After noticing the kind of girls who inspired the "McDramaPants" sisters, I noticed another kind. On all the vague posts where it was very obvious that the writer didn't want to name names, but wanted to rant and rave about how terrible a certain someone was, almost every time, one of the very first comments was from another girl who was begging for the details. She would plead for the ranter to message her or text her the details. I thought it was hilarious how ridiculous they made themselves look. I imagined a crazed teen, foaming at the mouth for some more juicy gossip. From that I came up with Nosy Nellie.

Nosy Nellie wants ALL the details. Text her them! Now!

I'm sure everyone has, or has had before unfriending, an Angry McToiletMouth on their Facebook. Someone who's mad about everything, and uses profanity to let everyone know it.

Angry McToiletMouth - Was raised by a sailor. Thanks to his loving grandmother he developed a strange passion for the delicious and exotic flavors of Ivory soap.

If no one has ever had anyone with a rabid political opinion on their Facebook, then they are missing half the Facebook experience! Just kidding, but I'm pretty sure everyone has at least one of these people on their wall.

The Political Ones - No one really knows them. They just friend everyone in order to spread “Truth”.

G. O. Pachyderm - A level headed conservative whose statuses are constantly hijacked by the others and turned into a massive verbal brawl.

R.W. Republicrazy - Joined Facebook to spread the truth about the horrors of Communism.

Rabid Liberal - Joined to spread the truth about the horrors of Capitalism.

Lefty T. Parrot - Doesn’t know anything other than what the TV tells him.

Indie Pendant - Just wants them all to get along.

I have a few friends who are always posting song lyrics on Facebook. That was where I got the idea for Joy Lyrical. I'm not sure where Gloom came from. For some reason I decided to do an emo version who always wrote depressing lyrics instead of happy ones.

The Lyrical Twins - Joy and Gloom are proof that twins are definitely not clones. Life in the Lyrical household revolved around music. There was always a song in the air. But while Joy was one of the happiest children you’ll ever meet, Gloom took a decidedly different path. He makes Eeyore look like a ray of sunshine.

I have more than one Facebook Friend who is a mother, who frequently posts some hilarious disaster that has befallen her household that day. Usually a child making a mess or breaking something. I took this idea and blew it to outlandish proportions for my Mamma Frazzled character.

Mamma Frazzled - Her real name is Martha, but after she lost track of how many kids she had, everyone just started calling her Mamma. Papa Frazzled is gone almost all day trying to earn enough to feed their 7(?) children. The only reason that Mamma doesn’t go insane is Grammie, who is more than happy to help out.

In addition to frazzled mothers, another thing I noticed about many Facebook Friends is that there are a lot of really proud grandmothers bragging about their grandchildren. I started to wonder about Mamma Frazzled's mother and how she would view her grandchildren who were holy terrors. I decided that she would brag about them anyway, and even the worst behavior would be overlooked as something adorable and endearing.

Grammie Happy - Loves all her grandkids, even when they are complete terrors. Grammie's real name is Lillian Bath, and she is Mamma Frazzled’s mother. She thought that Facebook was like a chat room and made up a name when she joined for the sole purpose of bragging about how wonderful her grandbabies are.

(The name Lillian Bath I came up with for the sole purpose of using it as the punchline of a joke in the name of one of my next two characters. :p)

My next two characters were born from the need for another more silly family member to reply to Mamma Frazzled. I decided to name him Crazy Uncle. Then I needed a wife, so I named her Aunty Uncle. Then, for reasons unknown even to myself, I decided to make up a very complicated backstory for why their names were Crazy and Aunty.

Crazy Uncle - A total goofball. He has had the nickname “Crazy” ever since age 6, when Aunty gave it to him during a Valentine’s Day project in art class where he consumed 7 1/2 bottles of paste, a box of crayons, and 2 containers of glitter. His real name is Craig, but almost no one calls him that except for his wife when she is exasperated with him. Which is most of the time.

Aunty Uncle - Her real name is Anita, but after he’d consumed all the supplies during that Valentine’s Day project, Crazy misspelled it as Anti on her Valentine. When their parents saw the card, it became a joke between their families that they should be married so she could be called Aunty Uncle. Anita vowed it would never happen, as she claimed she couldn't stand Crazy. Finally she consented, but claimed it was only because she hated her Maiden name. Which is understandable. Her parents claim it was because her grandmother’s dying wish was for her first granddaughter to be named after her, but it still seems rather cruel of Mr. and Mrs. Bath to name their poor daughter Anita.

Aunty is Mamma Frazzled’s older sister and Grammie Happy’s daughter.

The next two characters Lorenzo Literate and Izzy Illiterate started out completely independent of each other. But they have gone through a significant amount of literary evolution, and they are now two sides of the same coin. After I had changed the characters into what they are today, I started thinking about how completely opposite they were, and thought it would be funny if they were siblings. So far I have not revealed this in the series, but Lorenzo and Izzy are brother and sister.

Izzy Illiterate was one of my very first ideas for a Facebook spoof. As I'm sure you know, if you've read my blog at all, bad spelling & grammar is one of my pet peeves. I notice it everywhere, especially on Facebook, so a terrible speller was a natural choice for a character. When I first wrote the character I named her "Supportive Illiterate" because I noticed so many people replying to others whining "Pity me!" statuses who would say all sorts of cliche supportive things like "Don't let the haters get you down!" But they would type it as "dont let teh h8erz gert yo don!!!1" After I decided to expand the post into a series I decided to change the name to give myself more options with the character. I decided on the name Izzy because I love alliteration, and because I had just watched a Canadian cartoon series called "Total Drama Island" and there was a completely insane, random, off-the-wall character named Izzy who I found hilarious and I wanted to name a character after her.

Lorenzo Literate started out as a character named "Literate Quoter" and I changed his name for the same reason I changed Izzy's - to give the character more options. My original intent was a character who posts "Deep" quotes, because he felt himself above everyone else. When I was thinking about names I settled on Lorenzo, because it had a rather "Snobby" quality to it, and I wanted the character to be the embodiment of snobbery. I imagine Lorenzo to be very "Hipster."

Over the course of the series, Lorenzo has become more and more sarcastic. In a way, he has now become me. At least, he is the me inside my head. I have a very sarcastic inner voice, and I make Lorenzo say things I would feel like saying to really dumb people, but never would in real life.

Lorenzo and Izzy - Why are they listed together? Well, it may surprise you to learn that they are brother and sister. Just don’t tell anyone.

Lorenzo Literate - He is deeply ashamed of his past. The Illiterates were not a very educationally minded family, and Lorenzo was always considered the black sheep. As soon as he turned 18, he moved out and legally changed his last name to the much more distinguished sounding “Literate.”

Izzy Illiterate - She spent so much time texting in class, that she forgot anything she ever learned about proper grammar or spelling. And she really doesn't care either. She thinks people who know how to spell are snobs, which is an understandable assumption, given her brother...

There are way too many people on Facebook who seem to have no sense of decorum at all, and are constantly over-sharing everything, from their bathroom habits, to nasty things that happen to them when they get sick. That was where my character, T.M. Info came from.

I have a sneaking suspicion that most of these people are actually just trolling to get a reaction out of their family and friends, and most of them do get reactions, usually from their spouse or parents. That was were I got the idea for Mrs. Info from.

T. M. Info - Thomas Michael was always the class clown. Most of the Info family gave up on trying to teach him manners years ago. Whenever he was taught a new rule of etiquette he did the exact opposite. His mother still has to scold him for belching at the dinner table, and he is 36.

Mrs. Info - Mary-Anne Info used to be a teacher, and she knows everything there is to know about everything. A strict disciplinarian, if you didn’t shape up, you shipped out. To her very deep shame, the only child she was never able to tame was her own son. 

I know a lot of people who are obsessed with sports. Most of these people have Facebook pages. All of them inspired Fanny LuvSports and Frankie Sportsfreak. I probably should have only made one sports loving character since I don't even like sports myself, but when I first thought of them I was planning on having them eventually start dating so they could be "In a Relationship." That way I could use them to play around with that aspect of Facebook. So far I have yet to think of a very good way to go about that though. I'm still planning on it, I just don't know when I'll get to it.

Fanny LuvSports and Frankie Sportsfreak have known each other since they played T-Ball together in Kindergarten. All their friends think they should get married, but they’ve never even dated. They’re too busy watching football. (And baseball, and basketball, and hockey, and soccer, and horseracing, and tennis, and volleyball, and rugby, and NASCAR, and polo, and figure skating, and lacrosse, and the X Games…) 

I have a few Facebook friends who seem overly fond of alcoholic beverages, and like to post about their exploits whilst under the influence. That was where the inspiration for Lill Sloshy came from.

Lill Sloshy - Lill is an edgukated woman! At least that’s what her last Facebook status said. She went off to college to get a degree in… well, no one really knows what. Can one major in partying? All we know is that she’ll never fall off the wagon since she’ll never get on. Somehow she manages to stumble to a computer every once in awhile to complain about her hangover, or post about how she’s the life of the party. We’d guess that in a few years she’ll lived under a freeway overpass.

There are a few people on my Facebook wall who are completely obsessed with bodybuilding, and seem to only post updates about their time at the gym and their status updates make them sound like they view people who don't work out as much as they do as somehow inferior to them. I think they see their posts as inspirational but they end up coming off as completely full of themselves. Their posts are always followed by comments and likes only from other people who spend as much time exercising as they do, and all the posters are extremely self congratulatory. They strike me as the "Culture Snobs" of the workout world.

These kinds of posts inspired me to create the character of Mich Morebuff. But instead of trying to be inspirational, this character is just straight up full of himself. His posts are always followed by a new gym/jock/musclehead character liking his post. Coming up with a new character each time is almost as fun as coming up with the outrageously boastful things he says.

Mitch Morebuff - An avid body builder, Mitch has tons of gym club friends. That’s pretty much it. He doesn’t do much outside the gym. It’s a wonder he has time to tell us about it all on Facebook.

I'm not sure that the next character was inspired by any Facebook friends in particular. BB Tween's personality probably came more from watching teen sitcoms from Disney and Nickelodeon. I use her mostly when I want to reference something from pop culture. If something is becoming very popular I find out what the average teen girl thinks of it, and add a dash of boy crazy and fangirl and I can usually come up with a status that a stereotypical Tween girl would post.

Part of the fun of writing for BB Tween is that I get to come up with spoofs of things. A couple posts into this series I decided that I didn't want to directly reference anything real any more. Previously I had name dropped Barack Obama, and Doctor Who, but I decided later to just spoof everything instead. Now the president is Brock O'Mally, and Doctor Who is Doctor When. Most people will know what these things stand for, but I think it's fun to come up with alternatives. BB Tween is one of my characters that allows me to do that easily.

BB Tween - Never out of the loop, BB wears all the most popular fashions, watches all the most popular movies, listens to all the most popular music, reads all the most popular books, and crushes on all the most popular guys. If it's popular, OMZ! BB *Totes For Reals* 's it.

Roxy Repost was inspired by everyone on Facebook who post almost nothing of their own, only sharing what others have written. When I first came up with the character I was thinking of the statuses that people post that say "Repost if you agree with *Specific Statement*" or "Repost if you know someone with *Specific Disease*". I had another character named Sally Sharitall who just reposted meme pictures, but I have since decided to just merge the characters, since Roxy Repost was a much more developed character, and I really didn't need two different versions of the same character.

Roxy Repost - Roxy loves to share. If someone posted a hilarious picture, Roxy reposts it. If someone shared a brain teaser, Roxy reshares it. If someone posted an inspiring quote, well then Roxy's gonna be posting that too. If Roxy is on Facebook, awareness will be raised! Just as long as someone else raised the awareness first. 

Katie Catlover was probably inspired by friends posting cat pictures, but the character probably came more from the Cat VS Human comics by Yasmine Surovec. I love the idea of a crazy cat lady, and I like taking it to over-the-top proportions.

Katie Catlover - Katie is just your average Crazy Cat Lady. She's not married, and she doesn't need a man to be happy. Just her cats. Her many, many cats. No one knows how many cats she has. Not even herself!

Gladys Grizzle was born from a need for someone to respond to Grammie Happy who didn't see her grandchildren as adorable. I wanted someone who was of the opinion that her grandchildren needed a good spanking. After I'd invented the character, I had her get into an argument with Rabid Liberal, and I decided I liked her sassy attitude, and I wanted her to be a full time character.

Gladys Grizzle - Gladys is probably the most internet savvy person her age. Her son bought her a computer before computers were cool, and now she's an expert. Gladys has strong opinions, and when she gets on Facebook she shares them with everyone. And no one disagrees with Gladys, because no one dares!

The next character came from the people of Facebook who are completely obsessed with food. Always bragging about what a great meal they are making/eating, and always posting pictures of their food. I named him Ferdie Foodie, and then I gave him a nagging mother who's worried about his health. Just because I thought it would be funny.

Ferdie Foodie - If it’s made out of meat, Ferdie will eat. Actually, there’s pretty much nothing Ferdie won’t eat. Unless it’s green and leafy. According to Ferdie, a salad is worthless unless it’s surrounded by hamburger.

Fiona Foodie - Ferdie’s mother. After her husband’s 13th heart attack, Fiona realized that their family needed to get healthier, and has devoted her life to eating better. Unfortunately warnings to her family members on the dangers of excessive consumption of deep fried Twinkies and cheese logs fall on deaf ears. 

The next two characters came from an idea from my cousin. She suggested I have two characters who were disgustingly in love. Always posting mushy notes for their significant other on Facebook so everyone else could see them. I thought it was a great idea, so I came up with Lorie Luvvie and David Duvvie. A play on the phrase Lovey Dovey. I usually had them bemoaning the fact that they missed each other, couldn't wait to see each other etc.

After a few posts of having them pine for each other and creating sickly sweet nicknames for them to call each other, I decided that they needed a reason that they never got to see each other. I decided that the reason would be that David works in another state. Then I had a weird idea and gave David a job as an armpit sniffer at a deodorant factory. Next time he had lost that job and had become a castor oil tester at a laxative factory. Then I gave him lice so he could test an experimental shampoo. Now my main focus of these characters isn't how sickeningly in love they are, but it's coming up with horrible new jobs to stick David in. I love writing them a lot more now than I did when they were just two gushy love-birds.

Lorie Luvvie and David Duvvie - The timeless and tragic tale of two lovers destined to be kept apart by a series of very strange occupations. David can’t seem to find a job close enough to keep Lorie from acting like the world is at its end.

My next character, Winston Q. Eyeglasses, is similar to BB Tween in that he wasn't inspired by any real-life Facebook friends in particular. I mainly wanted a character to use to reference geek culture. Like BB Tween I also use him as a way to spoof real world things and put my own spin on them. I also frequently have BB and Winston interact, since a lot of teen girls like "Geeky" things, because of the cute guys who play the characters. Winston is a terrible, unfair, stereotype of all geeks and nerds. But I don't care. Stereotypes are fun to write. :p

Winston Q. Eyeglasses - Winston is a geek and proud of it. Winston is probably a genius, but we may never know for sure, because he never leaves his bedroom unless there's a convention or a movie to go to. 

Marty McMacho was not inspired by any real life Facebook friends either. He is yet another stereotype. The extremely overconfident, manly stereotype who loves violence, meat, working out, being awesome, and hating anything "Girly" or weak. It's an easy stereotype to write since there are so many examples in pop culture to get inspiration from.

Marty McMacho - Marty is more manly than you will ever be! He's so manly, that flowers wilt as he walks by. Guns stand up and fire themselves, and anything pink immediately turns black in his presence. His diet consists solely of meat and protein shakes, and if he ever touched a vegetable it was completely on accident. Even Mitch Morebuff wishes he were as manly as Marty. 

Betsy Etsy was inspired by two kinds of people. The first kind are people who try to sell things from their Etsy shops on Facebook. I know a few people like this, but none of them are like Betsy Etsy at all. Most of them are actually very creative, and they all sell unique products.

The second, much more hilarious kind, was inspired by the website Regretsy, a now defunct blog that was dedicated to finding the weird, creepy, and flat out horrible creations that people have tried to sell on Etsy. When I came up with the idea of a character who tried to sell crafts on Facebook, I thought to myself, what if one of the people who ended up on Regretsy were trying to sell on Facebook? And thus, Betsy Etsy was born.

Betsy Etsy - Betsy is a powerful business woman! At least that's what she'd like you to think. She doesn't have a job, and she only makes "Crafty" items to sell online, but she is VERY persistent. Beware of "Liking" anything she's posted, or she might end up Facebook stalking you until you buy the quilt that she just crocheted out of strips of upcycled diaper wipes. 

Amy Aminal has the least interesting explanation of how I came up with a character. I thought it would be funny if someone from PETA were posting on Facebook. That's it. I don't have any vehement animal rights activists on my Facebook friends list, I just think PETA members are funny.

Amy Aminal - Amy loves animals. If you even think about meat around her you'll get such a lecture that your ears will shrivel, and you'll be bedridden for weeks. 

 

I'm sure that most of you know at least one person on your Facebook like this, the conspiracy theorist who sees signs in everything, and is certain that a vast network of evil controls the entire world. I have more than one, so I had plenty of inspiration for Connie Conspiracy

Connie Conspiracy - The Illuminary are everywhere but only Connie can see them, so she makes sure to tell everyone else. She desperately hopes that everyone will wake up to the pervasive evil that hides in even the most innocent of children's television programs and breakfast cereals.

You know how old people get on Facebook and for some reason they just type in all capitol letters, for no reason at all, completely oblivious to the fact that typing in all caps make's it seem like they are screaming? Well, that was my inspiration for this next character. The name came to me instantly as Elda Exclamation, but then I remembered, I have a character named Joyful Exclamations, so I added an S, and Elda is now Joyful's Grandmother.

Elda Exclamations - ELDA IS ONE OF THE SWEETEST, CALMEST, MOST LOVING PEOPLE YOU'LL EVER MEET, BUT SHE DOESN'T KNOW THAT TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS THE INTERNET'S EQUIVALENT TO SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS, AND SHE DOES IT ALL THE TIME! NO ONE HAS THE HEART TO TELL HER IT LOOKS LIKE SHE'S A RAGING BALL OF FURY!!!

These next 5 characters all came from the idea to make a character who was obsessed with organic food, and living a natural lifestyle. Since the natural lifestyle is frequently associated with hippies, I tried to think of a hippie related name to use for the character. My first idea was to name her Flower Child. Ultimately I went with a non-hippie related pun for a name, but I decided to make this a character anyway. I decided that she would be kind of a stereotypical hippie space case. I also decided that I would use do something similar for her as to what I do for Mich Morebuff, and have a different hippie character like her posts every time.

In the end I ended up think of so many good names, that I spun them all off into separate characters. The original "Natural/Organic" character I decided to name Leia Organic. A play on the name of Princess Leia Organa from the original Star Wars trilogy.

A lot of people who lecture extensively on the benefits of natural living, often eat things that are most decidedly not natural. I didn't want to make Leia Organic be like this, so I used my unnatural fondness for puns, and came up with the name Hippie Critical for a completely different character.

While I was still trying to decide on a name, a friend suggested Granola. I liked it, but I thought it would better as a last name. I started looking up hippie names that began with G, since I am so fond of alliteration and I ended up finding two that I liked, Gretta and Griffin. I decided that since I already had a natural/organic character, I would use both of these names and have them be a married vegan couple.

Flower Child - Flower is a free spirit who loves animals, the environment, and Tye-Dyed T-Shirts.

Leia Organic - Leia an all natural, 100% organic, grass-fed, modern day hippie with strong opinions about everything. For your own sanity, here's a short list of a few of the things you should never bring up around her: non-organic produce, vaccinations, pasteurized milk, Fun-Meal toys, carbonated beverages, breakfast cereals, GMO crops, chemical fertilizers, High Fructose Corn Syrup, factory farms, pesticides, junk food, fast food, frozen food, processed food and microwaves.

Hippie Critical - Hippie has strong opinions about everything too, but she talks the talk, and doesn't walk the walk.

Gretta and Griffin Granola - They met at a Woodstock anniversary concert and bonded over vegan corn dogs. They were joined in a psychedelic union of love the next day. Peace, Love, and Happiness, man.