Right now in Facebook world, they’re running the Facebook Greatest Album Challenge and it keeps cluttering up my wall.

Nominate your 10 most important albums in the history of mankind and then chain letter your Facebook friends to provide their own lists and see who is the Top 10 most pretentious friend in the history of the world ever.

Momentarily forget life’s challenges (the title of Pink Floyd’s famous 1987 album) and worry instead what people will think of you when you nominate Tubular Bells or The Knack instead of, say, Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick or anything by Phil Collins post-Genesis.

Is this morally wrong or are there no morally wrong choices in the Facebook Greatest Album Challenge, just a lack of taste and poor privacy settings on your account?

I could go on, but I don’t, as then I will be like someone wasting my time by arguing on my Facebook Wall how great Oasis was before Liam glassed Noel. Or is it the other way around. Good times. (BTW [What’s the story] Morning Glory is number five on my list based purely on these admirable fist-fighting and grudge-holding skills.)

Selecting the favourite albums from your youth is never a good idea as a creeping reality begins to set in as the sad soundtrack of your life is revealed as well as a fetish for making lists. So here’s mine:

Midnight Oil ‘Don’t wanna be the one’ (tick)

Nirvana, Nevermind (never mind)

The Cranberries ‘Zombie’ (5.15 Lit lecture circa 1984)

David Bowie ‘Heroes’ (a song about mortgage repayments)

It turns out my youthful rebellion was not as rebellious as I thought and I wish to thank Facebook for this reality check and ask them to inform my parents so they can finally lose that vague look of disappointment.

But what is the point of all this Top 10 list making? Does it make you any better than me, or me better than you?

Yes, actually it probably does.

But mainly, it just leaves me with a yawning sense of despair but not the good kind where you get yourself a buzz cut, win a Best New Artist Grammy and then despair even more when you realize it is only an ARIA. Unlike say the coquettish brilliance of Depeche Mode or The Cure depressed after a really big night out where nothing actually happens except for the black t-shirt.

Michael Scammell is a freelance writer.

Illustration: Touchstone Pictures/Working Title Films/Dogstar Films/New Crime Productions

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