In August 2010, Wylie Overstreet published a satirical article called "If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses" on the website CoolMaterial.com. Within a month, it had received 3 million views and had been "liked" by 120,000 Facebook users.

In A WORLD HISTORY ACCORDING TO FACEBOOK, Overstreet expands this concept into a full-length history of the world, from its creation up through to the present day, as if Facebook had existed all along and Abraham Lincoln had written a status update about "taking the missus to the theater" on April 15, 1865 and Ben Franklin had done the same alerting his network that he'd signed the Declaration of Independence ("Bring it," replied John Adams). Filled with hundreds of real-life historical figures and thousands of not-at-all-real Facebook statuses, comments, and actions, and parodying Facebook users' proclivity to over-share and use lazy jargon ("lol," "rofl," "fml," etc.), this is the definitive humor book for our generation.