Has the poking feature on Facebook ever been used for a good purpose? Does anybody ever benefit from the fact that they virtually poked somebody on the online service?
The short answer would be no. Most people think the act is worthless, kind of like a non-communicative way of acknowledging someone else’s presence: “Hi, I don’t really want to talk to you but I’m willing to press the poke button to let you know I was looking at your profile.”
People admit, it’s a little awkward.
All of that was true until somebody came up with brilliant idea of using the poking feature in a subversive manner. In other words: To bug the hell out of the opposing team’s football players.
So this year’s Civil War has brought about a new kind of sparring between Duck and Beaver fans, students can now poke the other team’s players to no end thanks to a Facebook group created by Oregon student Eric Carlson. He said he started the group in response to his friend creating a similar group at Oregon State.
“I thought the Oregon State group was really funny,” Carlson said. “It’s different than other groups, it gets the people involved.”
For those unfamiliar with the poking feature or Facebook, poking someone on the social network is simply a notification that someone pressed a link connected to a person’s profile.
The person receiving the poke is then notified that the specific person has poked them through cyberspace.
It’s effectively useless, except in this case.
With over 1,000 people joining the group within two weeks of its creation, Oregon Facebook users have created a massive deluge of poke messages on the Oregon State football players’ profiles.
Between Carlson and his Oregon State counterparts, Hong Nguyen and Alvin Trinh, the poking will not stop until the index finger starts to develop arthritis, and even then, the person will switch to the other hand.
Carlson said that he’s received some pokes back from the football players, but most of the feedback he’s received comes from Oregon State students poking him, and some vulgar e-mails as well.
“There’s definitely trash-talking between people,” Carlson said. “One day I had 129 pokes from Oregon State students because (the creator of the Oregon State group) put my name on the group’s page. It was crazy. I would scroll down my whole screen and it’s filled with the poke messages.”
Though it may be somewhat of a hindrance to Carlson, he tries to respond to as many people as he can.
“I try to look at the people that have poked me and sometimes I’ll send them messages like, ‘Hey, how’s it going? You look hot,” he said. “Thanks for poking me.’ I love to just talk to them – it’s really funny.”
Carlson even has his a favorite player to poke: Oregon State strong safety Sabby Piscitelli.
“He’s my favorite to poke because he’s the big-time defensive player there,” Carlson said. “Every day I just go down the list and poke him. Just when I’m bored, I poke him, when I’m Facebooking, I poke him.”
Despite the popularity of the group Carlson has received some negative comments from his peers.
“One person was like ‘Get a life’,” Carlson said. “You get a lot of haters out there, but there’s a lot of people that are all for it.”
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