Your buddy leaves his computer. He’s still logged in on Facebook. Time for a gay joke?
I love cock.
You’ve probably seen some iteration of this statement posted on a Facebook wall in the past five-or-so years, the result of a subterfuge designed to embarrass whomever left their laptop unattended.
It’s known as ‘Frape’, and occasionally ‘Face rape’ or ‘Facebook rape’.
Whether you’ve heard it referred to in these terms or not, I’m sure you’ve seen it happen. Some of you may have experienced it, some will have perpetrated it.
The set up is always the same; a friend, partner, colleague or unfortunate stranger at the Apple Store leaves the room.
Their laptop is open, Facebook account logged-in, the bright glow of the LED screen beckoning you to perform acts of digital vandalism upon their virtual wall.
What follows is rarely amusing or believable:
‘I’m a big gay.’
‘Looking for some hot cock tonight.’
Girls too are no strangers to this sort of hi-jinx:
‘It’s a boy!’
‘Walking a bit funny after that pounding last night’.
Oh, the lulz.
Within minutes the comments on the post invariably fill up with cries of ‘Frape!’ from both the victim and their friends.
Every time I see this on my newsfeed, my heart tightens the makeshift arterial noose and threatens to kick over the chair.
Firstly, are we so short on wit and creativity that the best insults we can come up with are vague and offensive jabs at homosexuality?
As if being gay is somehow both the funniest thing to talk about and the most embarrassing thing someone could accuse you of?
Grow up, will you.
And secondly, having someone assume your identity and write on your Facebook page has nothing to do with rape.
‘I think the word ‘raped’ gets thrown around far too casually. You ever listen to a bunch of guys playing video games with each other online? It’s like, “Ah man you shot me in the back dude. You raped me dude!”
I’m pretty sure if I talked to a woman who’s been through that horrific situation and I said, “What was it like you know being raped?” She’s not gonna look at me and go ,”Have you ever played Halo?”’
– Dane Cook
I’ve rarely had cause to quote American comedian Dane Cook, though this bit from his 2009 tour succinctly sums up exactly the problem with casually tossing around a term like rape.
Because there’s nothing like rape.
I’ve never been forcibly penetrated against my will. I can’t imagine the pain and indignity, or the lifetime of anguish coupled with it.
I doubt anyone who uses a term like ‘Frape’ knows what rape feels like either.
Let’s be clear; someone posing as you and posting a pejorative on your Facebook page is not rape.
An inconvenience, yes. A betrayal of trust. But to compare it to the most inhumane physical violation? Please.
Unfortunately, the comparison exists, and has existed for quite some time; the original entry for ‘Frape’ on Urban Dictionary was submitted back in 2007.
The definition extends to any action taken on someone else’s Facebook account, including changing their relationship status, liking and commenting on other people’s pictures or ‘poking’ other users.
For those wanting to know just how widespread and ingrained the term is, a quick Google search will deliver dozens of results for sites I’m not willing to link to here.
‘Frape’ is hyperbole at its most vicious and cruel, a lazy descriptor too easily accepted and passed into common usage without appropriate filtering or the slightest hesitation.
Friends who use the term should be challenged or unfriended. Offending posts should be deleted or flagged as inappropriate.
Combating this insipid lapse in linguistic judgement has to start now.
By saying nothing we are complicit in diluting the power of a term that should never be uttered casually, let alone in jest.
Speaking up is a start, and will go a long way to solving this endemic. But realistically, we need to modify behaviour, too.
As long as there are unattended Facebook pages, there will be the mischevious soul itching to fire off a droll missive in the never ending quest for the Holy LOL.
As long as these reactants (opportunity and inclination) exist, then acting up on them will provide the catalyst (status update containing a false admission) to drive the same result (cries of ‘Frape!’).
We will be fighting an uphill battle against apathy.
Unless perhaps, we change the catalyst.
One of the most common complaints I hear about Facebook is how boring people find their friends; how little interest they have in the sort of mundane minutiae people post.
More often than not, the newsfeed is the domain of the banal:
Fed up today.
Can’t wait for work to finish.
Getting my drink on tonight.
Seeing a Facebook friend post something entirely out of character is shock. It draws attention. It cuts through the staid posts around it, and the resulting commotion validates the perpetrator.
More often than not, the victim seeks revenge and it perpetuates.
Simply asking everyone to please stop posting on their friends’ accounts is not going to get us very far.
With that in mind, here’s my proposition.
If you simply must post something, what if instead of seeking to embarrass, we sought to inspire?
What if, in place of cock jokes, we posted thought-provoking quotes and philosophical ideas?
Imagine, for a moment, your somewhat intellectually restrained colleague leaves the room – his laptop open, Facebook account logged in – and you sneak over and post this on his Newsfeed:
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Imagine his incredulity upon returning from a much needed tinkle to find himself accused of saying something intelligent on the internet!
Picture the look on his face as friends like and comment on and share the update, perhaps taking the opportunity to step out of their own intellectual closet by posting a quote in reply.
Perhaps, rather than quickly deleting the update, he’ll keep it there, engaging friends in conversation for once. Perhaps he’ll say thanks.
Maybe one day we won’t seek only to defame each other, but also to… I’m not sure what to call it.
Fupgrade?
Finspire?
Facefix?
Faceroll?
(Leave your thoughts in the comments and I’ll update this post when we reach a consensus)
My appeal to you is two-fold: First, openly challenge anyone who uses a term like ‘Frape’ or ‘Facebook rape’. If they argue, unfriend them.
The feminist blog F-Bomb suggested in their 2010 post about ‘Frape’ that we should ask people to use the term ‘hack’ to refer to a compromised account, much like we do on Twitter. A great idea.
And second, go forth and graffiti the unattended Facebook pages of friends and enemies alike with thought.
Post Marcus Aurelius and Bukowski and Plath. Post Bill Hicks, Emerson, and Maya Angelou. Anais Nin and Gloria Steinham. David Foster Wallace and Jon Stewart. Stephen Hawking and Oscar Wilde.
Go forth, and perhaps we can show people that they can grab attention with their brains and with ideas, not just by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
We can show our friends that we’re not going to idly stand by as they use a term that trivialises and belittles one of the most horrific crimes imaginable.
This isn’t a behaviour that will change overnight, but we can start changing it now.
Who knows, if we can accomplish this, maybe we’ll defy our own misgivings and actually use Facebook to do some good.
Where there’s hope…
Please share, and leave your thoughts. Or better yet, leave me a quote.
‘If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.’
– Maya Angelou
See More in Social Justice
-Article originally published on Medium
My mates and I used to use the term ‘facejacking’ when you change someone’s details. We always went for the subtle though; the best is still one that I sadly didn’t think of. A friend changed the University that a mutual friend attended to the ex-polytechnic in the same city. Fun times.
“Having someone assume your identity and write on your Facebook page has nothing to do with rape.” I must say, that does belabor the obvious. I agree with the sentiments of the article, though I have to admit- before today, I have literally never heard the word ‘frape’ (no Facebook, no Twitter, no MySpace for me. Really… I don’t understand them, so they sort of frighten me; like modern music today, and certain foods, game shows, & leaders from other countries that I haven’t learned that much about…) I have indeed become the ‘older generation’ that I once… Read more »
A point of clarification on my part (hopefully, the author agrees):
“And I don’t think if you ever use the word ‘frape’ that you’re going to go to Gender Hell (or perpetuating a dark, five-year history of ‘systemic cyberogyny & frape culture’”
IMX, this sort of thing has nothing to do with gender or feminism. Women are as likely to trivialize such things as men; the point of commonality is having no clue of (or empathy for) what such ‘slang’ does to people who DO know what it is you’re invoking.
I think there’s generally a consensus is that the problem is less the INTENT to trivialize and/or dilute the meaning of rape by using the word ‘frape.’ I would suspect most (if not all) who use it do so without a deliberate intent to malign or trivialize the subject or victims of sexual assault, either directly or even in passing; were their intent to do otherwise, I would think their methods could & would be more overt. But intent aside, the net RESULT (desired or undesired) is (or can be) perceived as trivializing, and the net effect is diluting, distorting, and… Read more »
As you said yourself, intent aside, the result is trivilaization. I don’t see why you felt the need to undermine that with a lecture on the societal give and take with empathy.
The result is perceived trivialization.
Trivialization, like empathy is subjective, not objective. Because you may deem something as trivialized, does not make it trivialized.
No, sometimes it’s pretty damned objective. If you think a buddy writing embarrassing things on your Facebook page justifies referring to yourself as ‘raped,’ you’re trivializing rape. Perhaps you need to crack a dictionary.
“Everything about empathy is ‘give and take’ – not ‘due and owe’ ”
I’m aware of that. Opinionated does not automatically equal entitled, after all.
My point is that it never does any good to say ‘you must communicate exclusively on my terms, or to say ‘you must communicate exclusively on my terms’ There’s a subtle but important difference between saying “You can’t / you aren’t allowed to…” and “You shouldn’t…” (or, “I’d like it if you didn’t…”) The language of the former is rooted in the appeal to authority, and the language of the later is rooted in the appeal empathy. Authority’s power is derived from both the mutual consent of those under it (they recognize & accept its legitimacy), and also its ability… Read more »
“My point is that it never does any good to say ‘you must communicate exclusively on my terms, or to say ‘you must communicate exclusively on my terms’ ”
It also never does any good to overanalyze a casual remark in this way. But I have to ask, what do you think that rather boring lecture was, if not insisting I communicate exclusively on your terms?
“…the societal give and take with empathy.”
Everything about empathy is ‘give and take’ – not ‘due and owe’
If I had a “friend” who did that I would remedy that friendship immediately and call it my mistake.
It’s against the definition of hacking. If you leave your facebool or twitter open, your friend doesn’t need to “hack” anything. It’s open, it’s there, for the taking. Log off your damn account, or can you not manage to be away from it for 5 damn minutes?!?!?!?
It should be called a takeover, because that is what it is. I agree with the anti-frape message, but I’ve been fighting this concept of not hacking “hacked” for a while now. So damn irritating.
Thank you so much for that sentence: “Let’s be clear; someone posing as you and posting a pejorative on your Facebook page is not rape.” You hit the nail on the spot. Exactly what I am thinking whenever I read that most ignorant word creation ever. I wished though that you had only focused on the problems this word entails. Mixing it up with the actions of people writing in their friend’s name has diluted the message and since the headline is also centred on the (in my mind) issue of lesser importance, that is where most people will see… Read more »
Karen: sorry but you sound like you are saying “That is our word and you aren’t allowed to use it”
Assuming the word in question is ‘rape,’ what exactly is wrong with that? Also, it’s not that you can’t say it at all, it’s that you can’t trivialize it by using it to describe a minor embarrassment.
Thank you for posting this. The banality with which people compare horrors like rape and child abuse to trivial things like tasteless practical jokes pisses me off, and when I try to call them out on it, I get called oversensitive. Some things simply shouldn’t be trivialized.
“We do not fear the night, who have loved the stars so fondly.” ~ Seen on a tombstone, unattributed