In January of 2008, people all over the world discovered a new way to vent their life’s frustrations with the launch of fmylife.com. People come to the site and submit short stories of just a few sentences about something embarrassing or terrible that happened to them, always signing with the letters FML, an abbreviation for “fuck my life.”
Typical FML posts might look like these actual postings made today on fmylife.com:
“Today, my friend found a picture of herself on a website filled with pictures of thin people. I was in the picture, also. I was crossed-out with the word, “EWW” written next to me. FML”
“Today, in aerobics, while stretching, my friend leaned over to pull the long hair off my pants. It was my pubic hair sticking through my pants, and I screamed. FML
Recently, several mini-versions of the site have been popping up to serve niche communities such as FML websites for various cities, countries, or even college campuses. However, one recent addition to the FML-site community, EthiopiaFML.com, has run into some trouble, causing the creator to shut it down last week. The site was created by Darryl Stevenson, a blogger from Minneapolis, MN.
“There was nothing wrong with the site,” Stevenson told us in an interview yesterday. “Everything was working fine, and in fact it exploded in popularity pretty quickly, so it wasn’t an issue of lack of interest.”
Stevenson claims that he started the site because he had a friend back in college who was of Ethiopian descent, and he thought it would be interesting to see how Ethiopians took to the FML phenomenon. Unfortunately, the nature of the posts caught him off guard.
“I was expecting people to air their grievances, you know, just like they do on fmylife in the US or on my college FML site. People complain about writing papers or getting rejected by girls or awkward things happening during sex. But the kind of horrors I saw on EthiopiaFML were giving me nightmares,” Stevenson said.
Tiger was able to obtain some actual sample postings from EthiopiaFML before the site shut down:
“Today, I found some water near my village. At first I was really happy. But then I drank some and now I have cholera. FML”
“Today, the rebel army came to my village and began massacring everyone in sight. Some American helicopters came and a bunch of soldiers jumped out and rescued all the white people. FML”
“Today, I found out I have AIDS. I’m 8 years old. Turns out I was born with it. FML”
“Today, a bag of food dropped from one of those UN aid planes. I tried to get some, but another guy machettied my arm off so he could get to it first. FML”
Stevenson has expressed no desire to bring the site back up any time soon.
– BE
