I wrote this very quickly. I was inspired by the synopsis for the new episode, which hasn't aired yet. All I know is that it's about Facebook.

Kyle ran frantically down the street, bursting through the front door of his home so that he could get online immediately. As soon as he got up to his bedroom, he threw his backpack on the floor without a care and turned on his computer.

He immediately logged onto Facebook, checking to see if he'd gotten any new messages or friend requests. This website was really popular with kids at school. He joined it about a week ago, and had been checking everyday to see if there was anything new, although often to no avail.

Once again, he was greeted by the familiar text telling him that he had "0 new messages" and "0 new friend requests" on his page. He clicked the "refresh" button about ten times just to make sure it was for real. Unfortunately, it was.

He looked at his other classmates pages - they all had at least 200 friends. How did they get so many? There were only about 500 people in South Park altogether - and at least half of that population consisted of elderly people who probably didn't even own computers. Kyle didn't understand. He even found Butters' friend page - Butters had almost 500 friends. Hardly anyone even hung out with Butters at school. What was going on here?

After creeping around everyone's friend pages, he found Cartman's profile. He checked the friend count..it was over one thousand. "...1099 friends? No way!" Kyle thought. There was no way that the fatass was that popular. This was a nightmare - his most hated enemy was incredibly more popular than him. He had to beat him..he wouldn't be able to live with himself having no Facebook friends!

But how could he possibly reach over one thousand friends?

It was going to take a lot of hard work, that was for sure. He clicked off the internet and ran to his best friend's house. After ringing the doorbell desperately, Stan appeared at the door. "Hey Kyle. What's the matter?" he asked, seeing the sunken expression on Kyle's face.

"You have to help me!" Kyle cried. "What happened?" Stan looked worried. Something really bad must have happened. With the mortified look on his friend's face, and the tears threatening to spill from the corners of his eyes, it had to be something terrible. He immediately worried that somebody in Kyle's family had just died, or something.

Kyle sniffled and wiped his nose with his sleeve, before finally speaking. "I...have no friends!" he cried.

"..What?" Stan paused in disbelief.

"I have no friends on Facebook! I know..it's awful!" Kyle stammered.

"No..I mean, you came over here and freaked me out over this? You've gotta be kidding me." Stan was just about to shut the door in his face, but Kyle budged his foot in front of it. "You don't understand! I need your help!"

"What do you want me to do about it?" he rolled his eyes.

"Just sign up for Facebook, and add me as a friend!" he cried desperately. Stan shook his head. "No way! That website's stupid - I'm not wasting my time joining it."

"Pleaseeee! You have to add me!" Kyle grabbed the edge of Stan's coat and begged mercilessly. He seemed really obsessed about this website. Stan sighed, reluctantly giving in. "Alright, alright! I'll make a stupid Facebook account. Jesus Christ."

"YES!" Kyle's eyes lit up and he hugged his friend. "I need to go try and get more friends - see ya, Stan!" And with that, he ran out the door.

Later that night, Kyle was delighted to see that he had one new friend request. It was from Stan. He clicked on Stan's profile page to send him a message - but then his jaw dropped.

'Stan Marsh has 653 friends' the profile read. There were tons of comments all over his page - people sending him links to funny videos and commenting on his pictures. And yet his account was only a few hours old. What the hell was going on!

Kyle clicked on his own profile page again. 1 friend. 0 messages. He'd created the account over a week ago.

He shut off his computer, then threw himself on the bed and buried his face into his pillow. His worst fear was confirmed - he was a loser. He wasn't popular on the internet.

Kyle woke up the next morning super tired - he'd hardly gotten any sleep. All he could do was worry and get up every ten minutes to check his Facebook page for any new activity. He was so sure that other people might recognize him on Stan's page, and add him as a friend too - yet there was still absolutely nothing. He didn't want to look like a desperate geek by sending friend requests to other people, though. He was pretty sure cool people didn't do that.

He sulked into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He was already late for school.

"Hey, Kenny!" Kyle called in the hallways - he walked up to the large orange jacket that seemed to consume the boy alive, and smiled. "Did you sign up for Facebook yet?" he asked, a bit of impatience in his voice.

Kenny, as usual, spoke in a voice muffled by his hood. Kyle understood him clearly, though. "Nope - my dial up internet wouldn't work. Then Windows '95 crashed five times, and I gave up."

"Dammit!" Kyle yelled, clenching his fists. Kenny raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, dude. It's no problem! Don't even worry about it." He stomped off, muttering under his breath. Getting one thousand friends was going to be the most difficult task ever.

At lunch, Kyle looked to Butters for advice - he was sitting all alone, eating a sandwich. He gestured a "psst" at him, and Butters turned his head. "Hey Butters. I need to ask you a question."

"Sure! What is it?" Butters piped up cheerily. Kyle sat across from him at the empty table and folded his hands, obviously distressed. "You know the website Facebook, right?" he began.

"Well sure - I use it a lot," Butters replied. "Yeah, well, how do people get over 600 friends on there? I mean, do they really know that many people in real life?" he asked, completely puzzled. Kyle was usually pretty good at math, but this time the numbers just didn't add up. This was a mystery that even a genius couldn't solve.

Butters rubbed his knuckles, thinking of what to say for a moment before he spoke. "Wuhh..w-well, I guess they're just popular. I mean, they must have lots of friends..and they're probably really cool and stuff..and, yeah!"

Kyle thought for a moment. Butters didn't have lots of friends; it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. And he certainly wasn't really cool, either. He saw a drop of sweat form on Butters' forehead as he studied his nervous expression. He could tell that Butters wasn't telling the whole truth.

"Butters; is there something you're not telling me?" he questioned suspiciously.

"Well-what do ya mean?" the boy stuttered - trying, but failing to play dumb.

"Don't play dumb, Butters. I saw your Facebook page - there's no way you know that many people. If you're so popular, then why do you always sit by yourself at lunch?"

Butters took to rolling his knuckles together again nervously. "Because people are incredibly intimidated by my popularness?" he answered; more of a question than an answer.

"Yeah right! I don't believe you one bit. Now tell me how you really got that many friends." Kyle tried to sound intimidating, but it probably didn't work. He still wanted to coax an answer out of him.

Butters sighed. He knew he wasn't any good at lying and keeping secrets. It would only be a matter of time before the truth was forced out of him, anyway. "OK, OK." He waved his hands in surrender. "I..I aint supposed to tell you this, but Eric's in charge of it all. He's the one sellin' facebook buddies."

Kyle shook his head. "Selling facebook buddies?"

"Well..nobody wants to be a loser without any friends - so he sells em' to kids that wanna be more popular and stuff. It costs 10 cents per friend - o-or you can buy them in bulk and get a discount," Butters explained. He pulled out a book of coupons from his backpack and handed one to Kyle. "Here, I get freebies for referring customers. Y-you can use that coupon to get 25% off. It lasts til' April 15th."

Kyle ripped the coupon in half. How stupid, he thought. He stormed out of the cafeteria and headed straight for the computer room - where he knew he'd find Cartman.

Sure enough, Cartman sat in the corner of the room - he occupied the computer teacher's desk while he was out on lunch break. A geeky boy with large glasses sat by his side, typing away at the computer. Kyle trudged in angrily, Cartman grinning expectedly as he approached his desk. "Well well well. If it isn't Kahl. Let me guess..nobody wants to be your pathetic little online friends, huh?"

Kyle glared at him. "That isn't why I'm here, fatass! I think what you're doing is wrong, and-"

Cartman waved a hand and cut him off before he could continue. "Kahl, Kahl. You don't seem to understand. You see, in life, popularity means everything. It's what everybody wants. The more friends you have, the more power. Do you want to be a loser with no friends, or do you want to be powerful?"

The green hatted boy rolled his eyes. "THEY'RE NOT EVEN REAL FRIENDS!" he yelled. "They're just stupid little numbers on a page! They mean absolutely nothing!"

"Maybe to you, they don't. But to other people who look at your page, they mean everything." Cartman knew that he would get to Kyle with a little intimidation. He knew that deep down, Kyle wanted to be popular as much as anyone else.

"That's a bunch of bullcrap! People don't care how many "friends" you have!" he argued - though Kyle knew this couldn't be further from the truth, he just didn't want to admit it.

"Sure, sure. Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, people are just going to click on your profile and look at how many friends you have - and then they'll laugh. They'll think "Oh man, that kid is such a loser! He has no friends!" And before you know it, the only friends you'll have left at school will be people like Scott Malkinson." he taunted with a smile.

"Whatever! I don't care what people think of me - I'm deleting my facebook and never going on there again!" Kyle yelled as he began to walk out.

"Go ahead. They'll just think you're even lamer if you delete it. The only people that don't have Facebooks nowadays are social hermits. I guess you're crab person, Kahl? Are you a crab?" he chuckled as he watched Kyle leave.

Kyle stopped at the door of the room, sighed, and turned back around. He was defeated. "...God dammit...How much will it cost?"

Cartman smiled smugly. "For you? Only about one million dollars," he replied, resting his hands on the desk.

Kyle furrowed his eyebrows - obviously this pricing was different than what Butters had mentioned.

"Alright, alright..fifty dollars. For fifty bucks, you can get about 600 friends," Cartman explained.

"No way - I don't have fifty dollars!"

"Then give me your Jew gold," Cartman said, his expression completely serious.

"W-what..?" Kyle felt the lumpy necklace under his shirt - he couldn't just give up his Jew gold..that would be like..letting Cartman win. And letting Cartman win was like losing a testicle.

Still, he really didn't want to be a loser..and in his mind, the price of not being picked on by other kids for not having lots of online friends was probably worth it. He tugged at the string around his neck, revealing a chain, and began to slowly unfasten the back of it. Cartman smirked in delight - he could practically taste the gold in his mind at that moment. But then Butters burst through the door of the computer room, startling them both.

"Don't do it!" Butters yelled suddenly.

"Butters..what the fuck?" Cartman growled.

"Kyle - don't give Cartman your Jew gold! He ain't nothin' but a liar and a cheat! It's not worth it to pay for friends..they'll never be real friends anyway. I..I just realized that. They won't be there for you when you're i-in trouble, they won't go to the m-movies with you, they won't-"

"Of course they aren't real, Butters - they're computer generated," Kyle rolled his eyes, cutting off Butters' revelation speech.

"Yeah but..w-wait, they are?" Butters raised an eyebrow.

"Duh! Did you really think there's real people behind them sending you adoring messages and telling you that you're awesome every 30 minutes? It's all fake."

"Wuh- but..I knew they weren't real friends, but I thought they were at least real people. That's what it says in the ad!" he argued.

Kyle sighed. "No, Butters. Everything's set on a timer - Cartman paid that little geek over there," he pointed to the third grader in the corner, "To hack into Facebook's system. What I don't get, is why people care so much about some stupid number on a page," he complained. "You see, I learned something today... Friends don't really make a person who they are, but-"

Now it was Butters' turn to cut Kyle off during his little speech. "Nevermind that, Kyle! I'm gonna tell everyone about Cartman's business being a scam! Why, I paid for real fake friends, not bots!"

The blonde boy threw his coupon booklet on the floor and ran out of the room, leaving Cartman to panic. "Wait, Butters! NO! Dammit, come back!" He got up and ran out of the room after him, huffing heavily and lagging behind considerably.

Kyle sighed with a satisfied smile. Maybe fatass would finally learn a lesson about scamming people. He was so proud of Butters for standing up for once.

The nerdy third grader behind the computer fixed his glasses and looked up at him. "Hey, does this mean I'm done now?" he asked in a nasal tone.

"Umm..yeah, I guess." Kyle smiled. "You should probably like..go play outside, and make some friends, or something."

The third grader just shrugged. "Nah. I'd rather play Pokemon Online. I just have to go to the bathroom." He got up and left the room, his ill fitting pants riding up to his chest.

Kyle suddenly felt pretty OK with himself.