Robert Mugabe quits after discovering Facebook group against him

Robert Mugabe resigned today after discovering that a Facebook group had been set up against him.

"I had no idea that people thought this way. Political protest is one thing but some of the posts on the wall in that group about me were horrible. I don't have a fat head, who said this" He said, before running off to his room crying.

A short while later he had updated his twitter status to say that he 'hated the interspaz and didn't have a fat head, okay'

The international community are shocked by this sudden development but Ban Ki-moon of the Republic of Korea, the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations had this to say.

"People don't realise the power of these Facebook groups. In the 60s and 70s huge marches were required to protest against things but these days a few bored people will join a group just to break up the flow of wedding photos. Seriously though, is there a way of making it so you don't see everyone's wedding photos of Facebook? I only friended those people from my old school to see how fat they had become."

Other unpopular international leaders are now nervously checking Facebook. Kim Jong-il, the Leader of North Korea is said to only have a Beebo account, and spends most of his time on Flickr anyway but it is only a matter of time before he realises the scale of the disapproval out there, and the wall posts about him.

Jonathan Evans, the new head of MI5 revealed that Facebook is only be the latest tool used by the intelligence community.

"The situation in Iraq proved that you can't just use brute force to change a regime, we need to use social networking as a vector to undermine these people and let them know we think they are losers. It's not just a way of spreading information, we can use it to gather it as well. I have become friends with Osama Bin-Laden on Facebook and now I can find out what his status updates are. One day he is going to trip up and reveal too much and then we will have him."

These tactics have already been proven to work. General Petraeus the mastermind behind the successful 'surge' in Iraq revealed in a recent interview that the turning point was the creation of WWW.CAN-I-HAZ-AN-IED.COM where pictures of insurgents were captioned with poor spelling.

"Oh my god, that was so skill," said General Petraeus, "We did this one where a man was falling over and the caption said 'CAUSING TERROR UR DOIN IT RONG' it got thousands of hits and the next day it was everywhere."

Even though Mugabe has now left office he thinking about starting up a blog. "Yeah it will be aces." He said in a press conference. "I'm going to like totally raw and I'm going to reveal loads of secrets and stuff."

Mugabe made his first post a few moments after that and it was about what he had for lunch and how he hated his best friend. Several publishers have approached him with interest provided he is willing change the style slightly to turn it into Chick-lit and rewrite his time in office so that he was a ditzy 20 something with messy hair who just couldn't meet Mr Right.

(This post is entirely a lie, and is at best a ham-fisted attempt at satire although Robert Mugabe does have a fat head)

The Stalker Index

A chum of mine is having a bit of an issue with her ex-boyfriend. He was, a little controlling and they have split up but remain 'friends' because they met through business and they still work together on some bits and bobs.

His actions have got a bit intense since she joined Facebook. Every time a chap comments on her page or she talks to a man, or even become friends with a man he instantly phones her up to ask who they were and what was going on. Not terribly healthy as I'm sure you can imagine.

Anyway yesterday she decided to restrict what he could see on Facebook. Tucked away in the settings is a way of limiting what someone sees of you online so that to them your profile is static and unchanging. This means that while you still remain 'a friend' on Facebook nothings really going on there.

I talked her through how to do this and joked at the time that we would get an idea of her ex-boyfriend's Stalker Index by how long it took him to notice. If it was a month or so, well it doesn't even register, a week is okay too. A day or so and it's starting to get a bit concerning and if he texted her angrily about what she did before the day is out well that started to get a bit worrying. If of course he raged at her in hours then he was obsessively checking her profile and it was a bit scary really.

In the end the text arrived after 15 minutes, yup he was checking her profile that regularly. Oh dear indeed.

Facebook and dating

Facebook is an interesting device for relationships. If you meet someone in real life and then become chums with them on Facebook you are invited into their world. Suddenly their whole dating history is there to be looked as well as a selection of photos some of whom they won't have approved of.

It's as if you get to see a fairly honest appraisal of who they are which has to be a good thing.

The other thing I've noticed is that it's a subtle way of contacting someone when you haven't exchanged numbers. If you have chatted away to someone at a party but didn't ask for their number they can always find you on Facebook, especially if you are at a party with mutual friends.

This has happened to me a few times, where I've talked a bit of nonsense with a girl, then had to scamper on to some other venue only to get a little email to say that they want to become my friend. It's the timing that throws me. One girl added me to her friends when I was still out on that night out, does that mean she really liked me or did she just have a really bad night?

Last night I met someone at a bash for someone I used to work with, we happen to live close to each other so we got the tube together. I said a polite goodbye at the end of her road and ambled off into the night but by the time I unlocked my door I had an email saying that X wanted to be my friend.

Was that eager or just polite? Should people wait before linking up? Will it become part of the dating dance? Will people now start to wait three days before linking up so they don't seem so eager? Should I now go and have lunch with three female friends and obsess about someone named after a size?