Facebook: an index of middle-class backslappery?

Answer: Yes, it is. So no quarrel there.

Of greater interest is why this state of affairs unsettles me.

Because, of course, I'm hitherto entirely complicit in Facebook's spiderweb of the upwardly-mobile. And, like anything, it's what you make of it.

But somehow, when the myriad cash-riddled whims of tomorrow's socially-mobile starlets are aggregated, mediatised and reflected back at you in a luminous rush of bankrolled futures, it's hard not to grimace.

Lump all the international bright young things together like some all-singing, all-dancing capitalist blueprint and it makes you want to leave the party. Trawling Facebook's glittering, exhibitionist pages feels like a digitalised equivalent of US teeny-kitsch Auschwitz "Spring Break". You can't move for "There are 147 guests attending Em and Philippa's three-day fancy dress boat party" this, and "See you in Mauritius for the world's biggest gap-year-travellers-only pillow fight!" that.

Just like listening to today's festival-hopping hordes planning Glastonbury — "iPod...check; Ray-Bans...check; Cath Kidston floral-print wellies...check" — being reminded of one's "chosen one" status so unashamedly really does (and should) make you fidget. It's a barometer of moral wellbeing.

Naturally, then, there's a delightful strain of virulent elitism running throughout these agglutinated portfolios of wealth...

The following network group is a wonderful example of the kind of irksome underclassery that really rankles with generation Facebook (all spelling mistakes/stultifying idiocy/spoonfed classism repeated verbatim):

"Group Name:
Chavs who play music off their phones in public should be shot.

Description:
This is a forum where decent and upstanding members of society can vent their anger and disgust at chavs who play music off their mobile phones in public. It is unnecessary and not, as commonly believed by these skanks, cool. This particluar breed of chav is noticable by their unashamed display of a mobile blaring out music at a ridiculous volume (invariably what they believe is 'rap' or 'drum n bass'). They are regularly seen lurking at bus stops/park benches/ outside the local co-op or their most regular haunt at the back of the bus. They should be informed that they are annoying, not cool and their behaviour should be placed in the same catergory as those who still use handsfree in public (especially when their hands are, in fact, free). Please share your experiences of this behaviour that is quite frankly sweeping the nation..."

Lovely stuff. The group's subliterate members are an equally enlightening read. Vicky West, from Portsmouth, comments:

"Chavs in general are a problem! my friend and i shouted at one out of my car window the other day and he fell off the railings he was perched on....we felt rather proud of the acheivement! i hope his phone broke in the process..."

You go, girl. Repping our fine young chaps, Gray Robertson, from Leeds, chips in with this gem, complete with spiteful illegitimacy semantics:

"Working next to a college, there are often at least a few of these buggers loitering in the cigarette area blasting out the most awful bastard child sounds..."

...While Manchester’s Martin Attree makes a valiant stand:

"There was a chav at my work the other day playing shit dance music on his phone, so I went over to him and said, "I think someone is trying to ring you, you should really answer it." He looked at me and his chav mind couldn't come back with a comeback so he did a primal grunt, ha. I love chavs, they're so stupid"

Some wonderful contributions from Blair's little troopers, there.

The whole gilt-edged mass-rally charade is so seductive, mind, I fail to see it slowing down. Just as "university" increasingly functions as consumerism's bootcamp — a loan-bloated human cannon belching out bright white spenders onto the capitalist freeway at breakneck speed — the screaming Facebook juggernaut gathers pace. Embryonic A1/A2/B1 hordes flock under its banner in increasing numbers, a class-trumpeting cavalcade of shiny-toothed inheritees...

Be careful what you wish for, kids.

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Postscript: a reply to CW and JPS in "comments"

As soon as our course is done in June, I'll be deleting my account. It's been really handy for communicating with Uni peeps, however it's the "acquaintance-dredging" I can't be doing with.

You lost touch with people for a reason, remember: the natural ebb and flow...

Far better to let these memories, bodies, exchanges remain in the ether — floating marvellously as they should.

The idea that everyone you've ever known, including yourself and your former selves, can now be aggregated into a homogenous identity parade, to be scrutinised and consumed vicariously, is just so disappointingly "demystifying".

I never thought the notion "the tangled webs we weave" would have assumed such a shudderingly banal form.