It’s become one of the fastest moving fads in the history of social networking. In one week’s time, over 5 million narcissists, braggarts, exhibitionists, and serial jabbermouths have posted notes to Facebook, disclosing “25 random things” about themselves to their online network of family, friends, friends-of-friends, and of course more than a few pseudo-friends who are just keeping up appearances because they lacked the guts to decline a “friend invite”.

All the while, these very same people are exposing their dirty laundry, trivial observations, unsolicited fantasies, yawn-inducing confessions, white-washed biographical highlight reels and probably a hefty share of outright lies to an armada of sexual deviants, unstable stalkers, future blackmailers, potentially nefarious foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, and a legion of marketing bots- all of which are probably paying closer attention than those the list was intended for (for reasons best left unmentioned).

Just what kind of “random things” have been revealed via this mass act of egotistical disgorgement? Why, a friend of journalist Dan Zak of the Washington Post confessed, “I have pooped my pants more than three times as an adult.” Dallasite Mandy Aguilar reveals, “...my dog kisses me on the mouth. It’s cool.” An associate of Time magazine reporter Claire Suddath inexplicably revealed, “I like to tape my thumbs to my hands to see what it would be like to be a dinosaur.”

Multiple the pointlessness and puerility of those three disclosures times 41.6 million- and you’ll begin to get a sense of the sheer enormity of this catastrophe. Has there ever been a greater amount of trivial idiocy manufactured in a smaller amount of time and then forced upon a greater number of victims in the history of human civilization? Okay, besides the blogosophere then?

Unlikely.