A few months back, I wrote about my optimism for the future of Guys after hearing a toddler and his dad discussing fantasy
football (at the very end of this column). Since boyhood, I was convinced that there could be no better way to waste
time than by participating in a fantasy league.
Then,
I found Facebook.
After
a brief affair with MySpace (the Articles of Confederation to Facebook’s Constitution), I became fully assimilated into
the Facebook culture last spring. Never had I seen such a consistently wonderful time-wasting device. Work can wait- I have
Pokes to return and wall posts to reply to and inanimate objects to tag as my friends. Facebook also served the higher purpose
of allowing its members to stay in touch with friends across the country. Between my fantasy leagues and Facebook, I didn’t
have a free moment to spend being productive. Could it get any better?
Yes.
Early this month, Ben “BJ” Johns caught lightning in a bottle with what may be the defining idea of our generation.
It began, as many great things have, with a casual wall post:
BJ Johns (Michigan) wrote
at 7:32pm on March 5th, 2007
we
need fantasy facebook... stats could be like Percentage of Pictures Tagged that are Actually You (REALPIC%) and Wall Posts/Received
Ratio... Wall Post Return Percentage (WPR%)... haha
And
with that seemingly innocent wall post, Fantasy Facebook was born. Much like the inspired individual who first had the idea
to combine Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz (the two hottest Latinas not named Adriana Lima) in “Bandidas”, Ben had
a stroke of genius in combining two of the greatest diversions in recent history. From that historic wall post, Fantasy Facebook
has grown into a full-fledged science, with Ben as the field’s Bill James. Here are the statistical categories that
comprise Fantasy Facebook.
gRID (Grammatical
Ridiculousness): gRID, taken as a season average, refers to how poorly worded your
Status is, due to the little “is” in the box where you enter your status. The higher the gRID, the poorer the
grammar. For example, “BJ is quite busy” earns a low gRID score, while my current status, “Dan is wtf no
new office till april 12 th? earns me a high gRID score. To quote Clare Campbell, the statistic’s developer,
“Obviously, for gRID, low is good, like in golf. Or the limbo.”
GDWP (Gross Domestic
Wall Posts): An indicator of how heavy a Facebooker the person is, this statistic, developed by Mike Arthur, is found by the
formula
Y= Total wall posts + [(Posts on others’ walls – Reciprocated posts on your
wall)/ Days you’ve owned a Facebook]
PP TO (Profile
Picture Turnovers): The frequency with which you change your profile picture. Some turnover is necessary, but, like in basketball,
too many turnovers is a bad thing. Lauren Levine is the Josh Wright of this category.
GpERA (Group ERA): Divide the number
of Groups you’re in by 10. If it's a good baseball ERA (under 3.00) it's a respectable GpERA. Right now I have a 3.40,
which I need to bring down. One good facebook outing should do the trick.
PIG
(Post and Invites to Groups): Ben explains this stat best. “Someone who "posts" a lot of items to nobody in particular
and invites you to lots of stupid groups…may God rest her soul.”
A lot
of stupid posts + group invites = a high PIG rating. A Facebooker with a bloated PIG is like a pitcher with a high HR total
or a shortstop with a lot of errors (See: Edgar Renteria, 2005).
LiLAC (Links in Lieu of Actual
Comments): A running total of a Facebooker's wall posts that are just links to something, with no explanation. Can indicate
either efficiency of communication or poor social skills.
AR (Activity Rating): Ben explains
again. “This is like those weird NBA hand stats that take into account steals, turnovers, assists, points, blocks, rebounds,
etc; the later the date of your earliest Mini-Feed™ entry, the more active you are as a Facebooker.”
IDWP (Indirect Wall Posts): Roughly
equivalent to WHIP in baseball, this stat measures how often a post you leave on someone's wall is actually directed at the
person who posted below you. For example, take the following excerpt from Ben’s wall (spelling doesn’t count):
Mike Arthur (SUNY Albany) wrote
at
3:04pm on March 5th, 2007
no
yumi back off. ben is my best friend. now get it right or pay the price. also, anything cool happen over break?
Yumi Oshikiri (Michigan) wrote
at 12:49am on March 5th, 2007
HEY
BIEST FRIENDA
your hat was super kewl and i likewd wearing it
remejmber our pact to attend all clawses this weke!!!!
<3
FM (Falsely Married): Ben developed
this stat to measure the always controversial False Marriages, “the Facebook equivalent of the designated hitter.”
An FM status includes False Engagements, False Relationships, and False Complicated Relationships. As Ben put it, having an
FM status is “somewhat despicable.” The debate rages on…
FHP% (Facebook Heterosexuality
Percentage): This stat applies mainly to people like me that keep getting their profile hacked and made “Interested
in Men.” Take the length of time that you’ve been listed as the correct sexuality and divide by the length of
time you’ve had Facebook. A good fielding percentage in baseball (say, .990) is a good FHP%.
MM% (Mass MySpace Post Percentage):
For those who fall into the trap of spamming those "IF YOU GOT SHOT I WOULDN'T BE AT UR FUNERAL CAUSE I'D BE IN JAIL FOR KILLING
DA BITCH WHO KILLED YOU" gun-shaped messages or the "YOU HAVE BEEN HIT BY A SEXY BITCH SLAP- YOU ARE A SEXY BITCH, SEND THIS
TO 15 OTHER SEXY BITCHES" posts. When it comes to your MM%, lower is better. Again, like the limbo.
WRSU (Weather Related Status Updates):
Similar to fouls for an NBA player. Zero is good, although it raises some questions about whether or not the player plays
defense. A few (<6 per semester) is fine, because there are usually a few weather events that merit a status update. Too
many indicates that your life is so boring that the most exciting thing in your day was that it was windy. Here’s an
example of a WRSU (note the fairly high gRID):
‘BJ
is WHERE’S THE SNOW?!?!?!?’
FP% (Facebook Promiscuity Percentage):
Ben again. “Divide the number of friend details one has that include entries like "They hooked up and it was HOT AND
STEAMYZ0RZ" by the total number of friends. May also be applied solely to one's home network, and to other networks, like
Lunardi's in- and out-of-conference RPI.” FP% is often a reliable indicator of how many wall posts the person will end
with “LOVE YOUUUU!!!!! MWAH <3” when writing to their friends.
Pr% (Poke Reciprocity): # Pokes/#Poked
Back (P/Pb). Clare Campbell’s tool for measuring the percentage of a Facebooker’s Pokes that “receive the
obligatory poke-back.” A fairly reliable indicator of how annoying the person is (the lower the %, the more annoying).
Hard-core Facebook sabermetricians have questioned the validity of this convenient statistic, choosing instead to rely on
the time between pokes, reciprocated pokes, and follow-up pokes. Other statisticians, such as BJ Johns, raise the following
question:
“In
the poke reciprocity stat, do you correct for "poke wars," which are almost a reflex? Kind of like the score of a blowout
seeming closer because one team left the starters in during garbage time?”
SP% (Self Post Percentage): Coined
by M’arthur, this statistic reflects the despicable practice of posting on one’s own wall. You want an incredibly
low percentage in this category, if not zero percent. It’s like airballing a free throw.
PIER (Personal Info Efficency Rating):
Pure Johns… “Your 'pier' rating for short. This refers to the number of "interests," "activities," "movies," etc.,
in your profile that are not nouns, but instead sentences or paragraphs. Example: A player with a high pier rating would list
favorite movies in an orderly fashion: "Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap;" whereas someone with a low
rating might say "LOL I LIKE WAITING FOR GUFFMAN..."
MuFS (Mutual Friend Score): “Muffs”
in conversation. A decent predictor of how close of a friend you are to someone- equal to the number of mutual friends you
have with a person. This stat is similar to RBIs. There are exceptions, of course. Just like there are people you’re
great friends with that you have few mutual friends with, there are baseball players that are great power hitters but don’t
put up a lot of RBI (due to the shallow lineup around them- think Beltran in KC, 2003). The problem with this stat is that
for every David Ortiz there's always a Preston Wilson (lots of RBI but can’t keep a starting job)- someone you have
a ton of mutual friends with but that you hate.
Realfriend%: The number of your
“friends” who are actually your friends in real life. For instance, Mike Arthur, the creator of this statistic,
has 382 friends, but let’s say he’s only somewhat close to 45 of them- this yields a Realfriend% of 45/382, or
11.8%.
DGLS
(Mass Post Frequency): A Campbell statistic, it’s pronounced “dig-uhhls.” Refers to the act of mass-posting.
Possibly named after notorious mass-poster Kathleen “Diggles” Digan, although to quote Michael Scott, “Who
knows. Who knows how words are formed.” If you mass posted, some might say you “Schruted it.”
Status Penalty Minutes: Minutes
where you weren’t doing what your status said. A M’arthurism.
FTP (False Tag Percentage): The
percentage of your photo tags that are not actually of the person. The Limbo Rule occasinally applies here (the lower the
better).
APP% (Abstract Profile Picture
Percentage): For those who have something other than their own face as their profile picture.
RC Rating (Relationship Status Consistency Rating): That girl that's single one day
and in a relationship the next day and complicated the next day has a low RC Rating.
TR% (Tag Ratio) Expressed as a
percentage, it's found by going to a person's View More Pictures and dividing the number of pictures Tagged By the User by
the number of pictures Tagged By Others (TBU/TBO). Can be insightful about the kind of person and the kind of Facebooker they
are- a shutterbug sorority chick will have a high TR%, for example. This stat is sort of like batting average.
WaPP (Wall Post Predictability):
This statistic expresses the predictability of a wall poster. If someone follows the same format on a lot of wall posts (Digan,
for example, starts a good percentage of her posts with “lol, comma…”), they have a high WaPP, which isn’t
necessarily a good thing, although it can be endearing.
+/-: Your overall impact as a Facebooker. Like in hockey, this is a critical litmus test for the quality
of your value as a Facebooker. The +/- rating is an amalgam of most other Fantasy Facebook stats. It basically asks whether
or not Facebook is better for your having used it. It’s calculated by the following formula:
