Computer | TechBlogPlus

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Social networking site Facebook has more than 350 million active users, and more than 35 million users update their "status" every day. They could be updated with personal information, music, videos, links, or anything that users feel the need to share with their social group.

During 2009, nearly 13 billion of these status updates were posted, and Facebook has released its "Top Status trends of 2009," indicating just what was on people's minds.

The top status update trend was "Facebook Applications," which includes automatic posts made by the hugely annoying Farmville game from Xynga. This game proved to be extremely popular this year, and has 72 million monthly active users. This application prompts users to post numerous status updates which aid other players of the game, and helps them progress faster.

But because this isn't exactly an active post made by users, it's the second place that is most interesting: FML.

FML is a shorthand expression for "F*** my Life" which is usually tacked onto the end of a description of something bad that has happened to the speaker. It is most effectively employed in situations with ironic or ridiculous outcomes.

"Today, I received my passport in the mail. They got my birthdate wrong. Then I picked up my birth certificate that I had sent in with the application. Turns out my parents have been celebrating my birthday on the wrong day for 16 years. FML"

The phrase is actually a translation of the French abbreviation "VDM," or "Vie de Merde," which began as an IRC channel where friends could share stories of comedic suffering. The phrase was then loosed on the general public as a dedicated microblog in 2008, and has since become a common expression in French online conversation.

In 2009, both the site and phrase grew beyond its French origins and was released in Swedish (FFML), Italian (VDM), Spanish (PVDM), and English with language-specific taglines. It has been a hit in all of them, and looks to be a socio-linguistic phenomenon.

"We get a lot of e-mails and posts on the blog section of the Web site thanking us...mainly pointing out the fact that people get a kick out of laughing at some of the stories posted on the site," fmylife.com's Alan Holding told Betanews today. "Through the auto-moderation system, the users can also contribute to the direction the site can go in, and the user involvement part is very popular with the users, it's becoming a real community. And the comments section under each FML story shows that sometimes, people from other countries and cultures can empathize with the original posters, so we can definitely say that the same sh** happens to us all over the world!"

"The main ingredient of the stories posted on fmylife.com is the ability to laugh at your own mishaps, and have the guts to share it with the world," Holding continued. "On sites like Postsecret for example, the posts are way more serious most of the time, but the fact that people are willing to share with others shows that it's borne from a real need to share. Anonymity enables us to do so without running the risk of being 'found out', even though the theory is that people write diaries with the subconscious desire to have them read by other people. So these sites offer a sort of half-way measure, a way to share things that have to come out, it's always been said that a problem shared is a problem halved, so I hope that in sharing these stories, people are unburdened in a way of what they've been holding back, and burning a hole in their brain, through shame, disgust, etc. But have to be funny as much as possible! To make it on to the site, the story has to be true, or at least plausible, funny, not (too) gross, amusing, bittersweet, there's no real criteria, but it the idea behind the site isn't to present a collection of sad stories of depressing woe, but an alternative look at the crap that happens to us every day, as well- written as possible, with a modicum of self mockery!"

So the combination of Schadenfreude, anonymity, and repetitive branding turned FML from an anonymous thread into a full-fledged aphorism in half a dozen languages. Impressive, to say the least.