SNARK AHEAD

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REALLY TAKE SERIOUSLY OR REBUT

JUST SNARK

PREFACE TO SNARK: This article is subtitled, "Is ‘Friends’ Still the Most Popular Show on TV?" It seems to me as if we could answer this question simply by looking at data.

Nowhere throughout this article do I encounter actual data.

So let's just write a multipage article about thoughts instead of answering its 'premise', shall we?

Now for nitpicking quotes and snark. Lots of snark.

And yet, astonishingly, the show is arguably as popular as it ever was

I'm sorry, can we see any sort of data to back this up other than the fact that if you say "Friends, the tv show," most people seem to know what you are talking about? In which case, dozens of TV series from several decades also fit the bill?

It is, of course, slightly strange that a 20-year-old sitcom still retains such a magnetic appeal;

This doesn't seem like a reasonable assertion at all. I say: M*A*A*S*H, Happy Days, The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch, SNL, Gilligan's Island, Three's Company, Who's The Boss? The only difference between these and Friends is that no one made the whole series of any of these available for streaming 20 years after they came out. Well, actually, SNL is available. Community had a running gag reference to "Who's the Boss." Raise your hand if you can't whistle (or remember) the theme song to Andy Griffith or quote, "a three hour tour," from Gilligan's Island. Is it possible no earlier TV shows had the same streaming opportunities as Friends did?

Now Krystie is a staff writer, and Kayla an intern, at BuzzFeed. Both of them write about Friends, a lot.

Translation: Both of them write about anything that generates pageviews. Kayla just doesn't get paid for it. But that's okay, because she only got in at Buzzfeed because she had a sister there.

The ­fourth-most-popular post Krystie has ever written, with nearly 1.5 million views, is “72 Truths ‘Friends’ Taught You About Life in Your Twenties.”

Translation: "The fourth-most-popular post Krystie has ever written, with nearly 1.5 million views, at least 1/3 of which were from people not in their twenties, is "72 generic truisms that make you feel better about where you are now, which we're going to say is your twenties, but really could possibly extend from age 16 to 36. Especially if you're in denial about your age. "

“I watch shows like Girls and it feels like the raw reality of life,” says Kayla.

I'm sorry, Kayla. Real life has failed you. Get a job. Scratch that: cut your parental apronstrings, then get a job that will pay for your lifestyle. Oh, is that not possible? "Welcome to life, it sucks, you're going to love it."

It’s a deceptively simple synopsis,

Ah, yes. I believe we have uncovered the nature of synopses.

“When I was 14 years old, going on 15, I went through depression, fights with my own friends, a roller coaster of emotions,” she writes. “The ONLY thing that kept me from crying were the six New Yorkers that I grew up getting to know.”

Translation: When I was a teenager being angsty and without any world experience, I thought Friends was the perfect expression of real life, and I've never been able to give that idea up since. (That's ok, hon. Sex and the City helped me through a bad breakup. What's not OK is thinking that somehow it reflected in any way real experience or life.)

Translation 2: I should've just put on my big girl pants and cried once in a while instead.

“Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it.”

Who the fuck are you? Oh right, the generation that birthed and then loved emo.

“The ’90s were a great time,” says Chris Mustacchio, who is 24, works in New York, and estimates he’s seen every episode of Friends more than five times. Like more than a few people I talked to, he describes habitually falling asleep to the show. “If you think about it, back then there was little conflict. It was pre-9/11. You could smoke on airplanes, you could smoke in restaurants. Bill ­Clinton was in the White House. He was the best president of all time!”

Dude, a) you turned 8 in 2000. All you know about the 90s is based on ideas, not facts. Oh, and this shitty TV show you idolize.

b) What perfectly valid justifications for believing the '90s were a great time. You could smoke cigarettes everywhere. Ah, yes, the epitome of freedom and carefree, non-judged existence. Someone charismatic was in the White House. This: what truly matters.

Coincidentally, these are all the reasons I pretend to/profess an exaggerated love for the 1970s.

(I was Chandler.)

Translation: the author sucks. Dude, who readily admits they were Chandler? It's like readily admitting you couldn't get it up. It's like readily admitting you're the pearl-wearing Sex and the City girl. Charlotte.

No,” she said, “because you wouldn’t find six people doing nothing in the same room.” Or if they were, they’d all be on their phones, seeing what else is out there.

Translation: your friends suck.

You know the one person I know, a former ex-roommate, who totally loves Friends?

Yeah, she also adores Zooey Deschanel to such measure that she has adopted Zooey's New Girl haircut. For at least the past 3 years. She has been known to insist she can only get her haircut by a certain hairdresser in...wait for it...Seattle. Because no one else, apparently, can get bangs right.

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I didn't want to like this article, so I didn't. I acknowledge that. I still think Friends sucks, and I think people who think Friends is having a cultural resurgence phenomenon are shitty people who like Friends and marathon it with their shitty "life-was-so-much-better-for-adults-back-before-we-were-old-enough-to-experience-adulthood-in-that-era-isn't-Phoebe-so-batty-crazy-and-funny" rose-colored glasses historical glorification.

Friends might truly be the Girls of the 90s, but let's be honest: both of them are self-indulgent narratives focused on spoiled, life-should-be-easy-for-me-because-it-always-has-been/I-don't-have-real-problems sets of people.

'Course, why would we want to watch TV, especially comedies, that pointed out the negative realities of life? Comedies are escapism. But let's not glorify them cuz they're 20 years old and act like they accurately reflected more than 10% of the experience of a certain time period. And let's be honest: that 10% accuracy is mostly style points.