It's the biggest pity party on the Internet, and you're all invited.
Fmylife.com is a blog where users anonymously post short messages containing "everyday anecdotes likely to happen to anyone." These unfortunate events start with "Today" and end with "FML" - which, unsurprisingly, is an acronym for "f--- my life," the phrase people have been muttering more and more frequently when something goes wrong.
I subscribe to the school of thought that something is funny until someone gets hurt, at which point it becomes hilarious. This may make me an awful person, but I can rest easy knowing that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Fmylife.com has shot up to one of the top 100 Web sites visited in the English-speaking world - and it is schadenfreude at its best. Where else can you anonymously judge just how messed up other people's lives are and laugh to your heart's content at their misery?
It's particularly uplifting when I've had a bad day. Going through the self-deprecating stories tells me I'm not alone. Nay, they tell me that somewhere out there, somebody's life sucks way more than mine.
Some of the stories seem too good to be true - if "good" is the right word to use. Users can vote up a story by agreeing that the life of the person telling the story truly is f---ed or bury it by saying they deserved it. A competition of sorts has developed to see whose story fails the most miserably. Most of the posts are, I'm sure, stretches of the truth at best. That still doesn't make the good ones any less funny.
That said, the FML trend has gone so far over the top lately. What started as a hilarious - albeit slightly facetious - way to waste time has evolved into a way for privileged kids to complain about trivial matters.
In the grand scheme of things, college kids probably don't have much to complain about - but we couldn't be any more melodramatic. Oversleeping and missing class is not FML-worthy. Neither is falling down some stairs (unless, of course, you manage to break both your clavicles on the way down).
At least your girlfriend didn't break up with you because you're not enough like a sparkling vampire out of a novel.
Something truly worthy of a FML should be crafted with care. To properly construct a LOL-worthy story about how f---ed your life is can be a fine art. And some things just don't make the FML cut.
The phrase "f--- my life" brings to mind abject misery and a pointlessness to go on, not how you're supposed to feel after you realize that guy you've been trying to get to notice you says you smell like a grandma.
At least you haven't fallen in love with a man online only to learn that "he" is really a 17-year-old girl from Chesterfield, Mo. - ouch.
What we can all take away from fmylife.com is not to simply pass judgment on how f---ed someone else's life is but to realize that we all have pretty messed up days.
And just when you think your day couldn't get any worse, fmylife.com is right there to let you know it most certainly can.
Naudia Jawad is a journalism graduate student. Her column appears on Wednesdays.
