The teens are trolling us, and we probably better get used to it. In acts of either brilliant commentary on the absurdity of the digital space, extreme boredom, or both, British teens have been making up weird Facebook events and making them go viral. They're also joining existing events that they have zero intention of actually attending.
Mashable reports that some kids in Norwich, U.K., made up a completely plausible-sounding event called "Year 10 Parents Evening" that ended up going viral. The description: "An opportunity to meet with you [sic] child's teachers to dicuss [sic] subject progress."
So far, there are 21,000 people "Going" and 8,900 "Interested." There are also over 3,500 comments in the discussion: "Get hyped," "Sounds lit," and the like. (Kids, please do your homework.) But the event is clearly an exercise in online Dadaism — it's not tied to a specific school, and it was posted by a community called WHAT'S ON? NORWICH that's created other questionable Facebook events.
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Every time someone says they're "attending," of course, the event pops up in their friends' news feeds. Pretty soon, "Year 10 Parents Evening" turned into a meme to rival all memes.
But that's not all: They're also picking up on real-life (albeit slightly offbeat) events and making them go truly lit — at least on the internet. One example is the Blackawton International Festival of Worm Charming, to occur on April 30, which now has over 2,500 attendees on Facebook despite the group only having 252 likes. (We'll spare you the worm pic.) There are plenty of others, too, like a class that teaches people how to grow edible mushrooms at home. We'll let you figure out for yourself why the teens latched on to that one.
So, are they making fun of the olds who are still on Facebook (while Snapchatting it all)? Maybe this is just the 2017 version of old-fashioned middle-school note-passing. Either way, Gen Z, we need answers.