SYPHILIS AND ITS FACEBOOK FRIENDS

Syphilis does not mess around. Syphilis is the kind of disease that can turn a perfectly healthy quivering rod of human penis into an undifferentiated squabble of pickled tripe. For hundreds of years, it's been taking those who allowed their amoral genitals to intersect with other bad genitals, and making their nasal cavities subside, their teeth fall out, and their brains gelatinize. Now it's on Facebook. The degeneration of a human being through the final stages of syphilis is never a pleasant thing. It is far less pleasant when it is relayed in a computerized feed of party pics of blurry Friday nights at the bar for the entertainment of strangers you used to go to school with. Facebook is a poor medium through which to contract syphilis.

In the olden days, a carrier from a foreign land would introduce a disease to an exciting new geography – a Gaëtan Dugas figure. Now, in these end-times of crowdsourcing, it seems like Facebook has succeeded in bringing syphilis to Facebook enthusiasts across the UK. No, it's not just a cheap headline either. Really. It's not. No less a figure than Peter Kelly, director of public health, has spoken to the Telegraph about stats which show that in the three areas of Britain where Facebook use was most popular- Sunderland, Durham and Teesside-syphilis cases had increase fourfold, with a lot of the cases linked back to encounters of casual bonery organized via Facebook.

Is this a good time for Kelly, a man of science, to learn a few lessons about the nature of causation-versus-correlation? Namely, that the sort of people who are going around putting their things into other people's things because they met them on a social network are a type in themselves, who existed before FB and who will probably exist after it too, (if they aren't syphilised off the planet). Facebook is making it easier, yes. But if you are going to have sex with people simply because they are signed up to a group called "If 100, 000 People Sign Up To This Group My Wife Will Let Me Name Our Son Batman", the predominant cause of your illness is simply that you're a dickhead.

Meanwhile, as syphilis eats away at Facebook users across the country, Mark Zuckerberg is now worth $4 billion – that's $80 for every man and woman in Britain. It's a quantity of cash that means he could pay everyone their portion as a bribe to perform a human snake of mutual fellatio stretching from one coast of England to another, which in a far-flung way, he has. Why are you giving us syphilis, Mark? Haven't we suffered enough?

GAVIN HAYNES