For all the serious talk about brands leveraging Facebook fan pages, discussions, and so on, every now and then it’s good to step back and remember exactly who and what Facebook originally catered to: smartass college students. To get a dose, look no further than the mass of rant groups that permeate the site. It’s like embarking on a NSFW sarcastic online archaeological expedition, sifting past the morass of corporate friend networks and alumni discussion groups to find the true roots of the site buried underneath…

Roots like, say, the “Are You a Model? No Wait, You’re an Idiot Who Got Dressed up for Class” group (262 members, small potatoes in the land of FB ranting…read on).fb_relatedgroups.tiff

Or follow the “Related Groups” widget to other hotspots such as those on fashion critique: “I Dont care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like a Dumbass.” (1,311,090 members with 3,503 discussion topics and 95,000+ wall posts); Science history informed age debate: “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.” (1,550,242 members – seriously); Or perhaps proper large group etiquette: “Keep Your Fucking Hand Down in Lecture and Shut Up. No One Cares.” (225,927 members).

Rant groups sometimes spawn lively debate just by their very existence – take the disturbing fashion statement of “popping your collar” (here’s some Wikipedia history, for all us…ahem, “you” I meant…old farts). At my alma mater it seems a raging battle is ongoing, with the “Stop the Pop: I Hate Collar Poppers” group countered by the loyalist “Fuck All You Haters…I’m Gonna Pop My Collar” group. In the spirit of diversity my old school is renowned for, of course an alternative group then popped up “Fuck the Collar… We Pop the Hood” advocating for wearing hoodies. Their member numbers might be small, but you’ve got to love the back and forth.

Random fun fact: That debate, by the way seems to be global – I didn’t have a clue who Eric Cantona is, but apparently he’s like the patron saint of popped collars (“I Pop My Collars Because Eric Cantona Did“). Moving along…

Just for kicks, let’s compare with an established brand’s fan page, say Nike. The Nike Shoes page (937,173 fans) plus the Nike…Just Do It page (497,475 fans), with a combined perhaps 3,000 or so wall posts and discussions. Compared to the Croc-hater rant group, Nike’s got them edged out by 100,000 members or so, but is dwarfed by their activity level.

What does this tell you? Probably not much, except that a) the college roots of Facebook are alive and well, in case any purists out there were getting worried, and b) sarcastic ranting apparently trumps brand loyalty. Or something like that.