Aberdeen on Facebook

There are several Facebook pages that have made my time in Aberdeen a little bit more entertaining.

I'm not sure why, but Aberdeen has a reputation as being kind of a dive. (In actuality, Aberdeen is the "Energy Capital of Europe", which means that the city is not only fairly affluent, but has also been largely immune from the global economic chaos of recent years.) There's a trend here in the United Kingdom to make pages for particular cities or counties that showcase the behavior of either the white trash element of society, or the uncontrollable party animal element. Here, we have The Only Way Is Aberdeen. It's not really representative of Aberdeen as a whole, but it's kind of entertaining to see a picture and say to yourself, "Hey, I know that dumpster that the drunken twerp in that picture is sleeping in!"

Another one that's popped up recently is Things Aberdeen University Students Don't Say. It's a touch of snark, as all of the items posted there are sarcastic reversals of the general sentiment of the student body. One example that I posted a few days ago - and you can see the context on that post - is as follows:

I guess the library is designed in the current way to avoid students jumping from the the 7th floor out of exam stress.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has actually tried to jump from the seventh deck in anguish over pending exams. However, another quote from the same page indicates another critical design flaw of the Hideous Glass Cube...

On day's where I can't find a seat in the Library, I go to the cafe, look up, and think what a brilliant idea putting a massive hole in every floor was.

Finally, there's Aberdeen Uni Tell Him/Her, a page for Aberdeen students to send anonymous confessions and messages. AUTH/H is sort of a spiritual successor to another page, Spotted: Aberdeen University Library, which featured anonymous notes about people studying (or not!) in the Hideous Glass Cube. S:AUL was taken down in late January. According to an article in The Gaudie, the worst university newspaper ever:

Allegations of sexual assault posted on the page led to police involvement and the administrators of the page eventually agreed to deactivate it.

CN GBU-16 and I particularly enjoyed a recent entry, as one of our friends shares his name with the individual whose exploits are noted thusly:

Oliver I'm pregnant. Your little swimmers got there!

So, I'll likely keep following these pages (the latter two of which have been pretty quiet since the end of the semester a few weeks ago), even once I head back to the States.