About a week ago a new spoof arrived on Facebook– the Condescending Corporate Brand Page. It’s a send-up of the crass way companies try to get people to click on “like” and “share” on social networking sites by using cheesy pictures and moronic text. On its wall are cute animals and grinning multicultural employees as well as a picture of three slices of toast. Against the latter it says: “Who likes Toast? click ‘like’ on this post if you really like Toast to eat!”

The inanity of this is quite funny. The trouble is, it’s nothing like as funny or as inane as the real thing.

Take Burt’s Bees, a company that sells coconut stuff for putting on your feet. Its Facebook page is “liked” by 1.2m people and generally held up as a great example of how to engage with consumers online. One of its latest pictures shows a china cow painted yellow and black with a beehive on its head. Next to the picture it says: “It’s Good News Friday and today good news says “mooooo”?.?.?.?Give us a like if you love our cow!”. This cutesy picture has gone down a storm. “Awesome!” “Pretty creative!” people commented, as they scrambled for the like button.