SATIRE: Love at first site

NOTE: This article was written strictly as satire. The names and proper nouns used in this article do not reflect their true nature in any respect. There is in fact no truth to this article. It was written as a creative endeavor for the purposes of entertainment for the April 1, 2005 Tulane Hullabaloo's annual Fullabaloo.

Thefacebook.com has become more than just a collegiate fad, it’s now a place for budding romance to bloom. Tulane students and facebook fans Oneida Mann and Justin Thyme were married this Sunday with facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg officiating.

“We just thought it was fitting to have [Zuckerberg] perform the ceremony, since Justin and I met through his website,” Mann said.

The couple’s unconventional romance started when Thyme, a senior in the School of Engineering, was browsing the Tulane facebook group “Fifty finest girls who have not yet completely ruled out lowering their standards for Tulane boys but refuse to cross to sidewalk, bitch, unless it is to avoid Carlos San Antonio Perez.”

“I was just looking through the group and checking out the girls’ pictures to see if anyone was hot, when I saw Oneida’s picture … I knew she was the one,” Thyme said. “I mean, she followed all thefacebook’s unspoken rules. She didn’t put up a picture of herself and her hot friends to purposely confuse guys like me. It wasn’t a blurry out-of-focus shot taken from a distance, and it wasn’t just a close-up of her face either. You could tell she wasn’t fat and had a nice face.”

When Thyme clicked on the link to Mann’s personal profile, his hunch that they would make a perfect match was confirmed.

“She had all the right taste in music, mostly indie, but some more mainstream stuff like Maroon 5 and hip-hop thrown in, so I knew she wasn’t just one of those pretentious posers. And she listed directors, and not titles, under her favorite movies, which was a sure sign that she was a serious film buff like me,” Thyme said. “But the clincher was definitely all the groups she was a member of. We had most of them in common, from Easy Mac Addicts to The Intelligent 48 percent. And the ones we weren’t both in, I was a groupie for.”

Thyme took these common interests as the sign he needed to make the first move with Mann – so he poked her.

“At first I was a little sketched out, because I didn’t know who he was. And his picture was of him holding this little baby, and I was worried that it was his kid or something. But then in his profile, he explained that it was his little cousin, and that really got me. I’m a sucker for guys who are close to their families,” Mann said. She was also reassured by the fact that he had at least 132 friends, which was comparable to her 198, and more importantly, “there was lots of writing on his wall.” Mann, a Newcomb College junior, said this let her know that he wasn’t “just one of those freaks who add people they met once at late-night boot, or bumped into on the street. He had actual friends, which I was worried about when I saw that he was an engineer.”

Mann poked back, and a couple of months later, facebook messaging evolved into “hardcore wall-writing, which is when I knew our relationship was really getting serious — I mean, Justin would write that he liked my new picture or respond to someone else’s comment within minutes. That let me know he was constantly checking my profile, which meant he really cared,” Mann said.

For the six-month anniversary of their first “poke,” Thyme created a facebook group called “We heart Justin and Oneida and totally think they’re the next Nick and Jessica.” He made the group invitation only, created a group profile that paid homage to the milestones of their relationship and finally surprised Mann with an invite.

“I started tearing up when I saw the group. I mean, he had gone through so much trouble; he made sure to get the group membership up to at least 50 before he invited me, and he made sure all my closest friends were in it. It was like a surprise party on thefacebook,” Mann said.

Thyme also proposed using thefacebook in a creative fashion. On the eve of Valentine’s Day, he changed the “About Me” section of his profile to a poem that was dedicated to Mann, and ended with the phrase “Will you make it official – make me the happiest guy on facebook and change my relationship status to ‘Married to Oneida Mann?’”

“I knew Oneida would check thefacebook in the morning, right after she brushed her teeth. That’s her routine. And she always clicks on ‘Recently Updated Profiles’ under ‘My friends.’ So, she saw that my profile was updated, and when she read through it to see what I changed … she saw the proposal.”

Mann responded in appropriate facebook fashion – she changed his wall with a resounding “YES.”

After that, Thyme and Mann put the wheels in motion for their perfect facebook wedding, posting a message on their “We heart Justin and Oneida” group to let members know about the upcoming nuptials and contacted Zuckerberg about officiating.

“Well, at first I was reluctant because I get a lot of crack-pot messages being the founder of thefacebook.com, but then I really took the time to look at their profiles, and I knew they were for real,” Zuckerberg said. He said their passion for each other and thefacebook motivated him to get ordained through an Internet service, just so he could perform the wedding.

The ceremony was held outside the Willow Computer Lab where Thyme first saw Mann’s profile, followed by a reception at PJ’s Coffee Shop. Wedding photos of the couple can viewed on both Mann and Thyme’s facebook profiles. The couple has not yet set plans for a honeymoon.

“We’re trying to get Mark to add a new section to facebook profiles for ‘Favorite Vacation Spots’ so we can get some inspiration,” Mann said.