BuzzFeed’s Top 30 Craziest Stories from Facebook of 2011

BuzzFeed, a New York City-based aggregator of pop-culture trends, recapped some of the craziest tings found on Facebook in 2011. The Company uses a web crawler as well as human editors to find and link to popular stories from around the web.

Here’s the list of fun, dumb, crazy and downright unbelievable things posted by Facebook members in the last year:

1. A burglar who signed into Facebook from a computer inside a home he broke into before leaving the scene, but forgot to log out before he left.
2. A mom posted pictures of her baby holding a bong. The woman was later arrested.
3. A man brought attention to himself by implying he was going to blow up a police station. When police went to investigate, they found child porn on his computer and arrested him.
4. An Iowa woman was arrested for lighting her friend’s house on fire after her friend “unfriended” her on Facebook.
5. A woman embezzled approximately $166,000 over an 18-month period from a law firm where she worked. She used most of the cash to buy virtual coins on the popular social games, YoVille and Mafia Wars. Bettysue Higgins faces up to six years in prison.
6. A survey from October found that 1 in 5 women would choose Facebook over sex. Cosmopolitan asked 2,000 of their readers “What would you rather live without for one full week: Sex or Facebook?”. A staggering 20% responded they’d prefer Facebook.
7. The city commissioner of Covington, Kentucky, Steve Frank, threatened to go “Taliban” on Occupy protesters.
8. A Florida woman was charged with aggravated child abuse after she allegedly beat her son for having a Facebook page.
9. A man held a woman hostage for nearly 16 hours in a hotel room in Utah and live-blogged the entire standoff via Facebook. You can read all of the status updates on BuzzFeed.
10. n May, 7-Eleven drew some negative attention for making fun of Mental Health month, posting the Facebook status, “May is Mental Health Month….or so the SHADOWY CONSPIRATORS WHO RULE THE WORLD would have you believe…”
11. According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, Facebook use is now cited in roughly 20% of U.S. divorce cases.
12. A taxi driver got revenge on a passenger who didn’t pay his fare and left his phone in the cab by updating his Facebook status. The cabbie wrote, “I was being a dick to a cab driver last night and refused to pay the fare and threatened him. When he told me that he would take me to police station I got scared and planned to a runner on him. And when I tried to run I forgot my phone in the cab. And now that cab driver is teaching me a lesson by writing this post. Even though I was being an extremely rude, clumsy bastard, the cab driver is still kind enough to give me an opportunity to get my phone back. All he’s asking is the fare I owe him and an apologizing note on my Facebook wall. He wants all my friends to Like it so they can see my true face. The cab driver will check my Facebook again tomorrow to make sure. And once he sees the apologizing note, he’ll send the address to pick the phone up.”
13. In May, Lady Gaga used Zynga’s popular Facebook game, Farmville, to premiere songs from her new album.
14. A New Mexico man assaulted his wife after she failed to “Like” or post a comment on his status update. Prior to attacking her, he’s reported to have said, “That’s amazing everyone ‘likes’ my status but you. You’re my wife. You should be the first one to ‘like’ my status”.
15. A Georgia man broke into a woman’s car and stole her cellphone. Police later reported, “The suspect apparently took a picture of himself on the victim’s phone, and due to her settings, it automatically uploaded to her Facebook page.”
16. A woman hired a hit-man via Facebook after posting a message offering $1,000 to anyone who’d kill her ex-boyfriend.
17. Two dozen Dallas City Hall workers received counseling after an investigation indicated the people were addicted to Facebook.
18. A Connecticut man was arrested after posting a video on Facebook showing him bashing his car into trash cans sitting on a quiet street.
19. Sarah Palin posted a note on Facebook saying WTF stood for “Winning The Future.”
20. As a show of gratitude for the crucial role Facebook played in the political uprising in Egypt, a man reportedly named his firstborn daughter, “Facebook”.
21. France banned radio and television news anchors from saying the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” on the air.
22. A survey of 6,000 people between the ages of 16-30 by McCann Worldgroup, “The Truth about Youth”, found that 53% of respondents would rather forfeit the ability to smell than lose access to social networking sites.
23. After the Royal Wedding in April, the Pippa Middleton’s Ass Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page started. It now has over 241,000 fans.
24. The FBI charged a Michigan man with robbing five Detroit-area banks after they matched him to photos on Facebook. Incredibly, the thief was wearing the exact same clothes in his profile pictures as he was when he robbed the banks.
25. A Pennsylvania woman was charged with various criminal acts after surveillance video caught her having sex on a public bus with her husband, who was part of a “work-release” program from a local county jail. The story quickly took to Facebook, where the woman began receiving numerous “friend” requests and other offers from male strangers, not to mention significant heckling from the FB community.
26. A New York man attempted to sue Facebook for $500k for removing him from the service.
27. A 20 year-old Univ. of Georgia sophomore used Facebook to help stop an in-progress armed robbery at his family’s home. Sitting in front front of his laptop in his room, the man heard his grandmother scream and opened the door to find “three hooded guys like all masked in black at the front door,” he said. “I shut my door, locked it, grabbed my laptop, went into the attic and hid.” He immediately updated his Facebook status, “HELP, ROBBERS, NO PHONE.” Although a lot of people thought he was joking, a close friend took the message seriously and promptly notified the police.
28. Two Pittsburgh people were arrested after a man stole a $12,000 drink and gave it to his girlfriend, who promptly posted pictures of it on Facebook with the caption, “Look what Robby gave me. I love him so much.”
29. A 24 year-old high school teacher in Georgia was fired for having pictures of herself on Facebook drinking wine on a European vacation posted.
30. A Justin Bieber-obsessed woman posted a picture of herself and her boyfriend on Facebook, stating he looks like Justin Bieber although he bares absolutely no resemblance to the music celebrity whatsoever.

We can’t wait to see what people do on Facebook in 2012!