In the post-Rage Against the Machine musical milieu, the nutters, anoraks and just plain irritating are all rushing to Facebook to bore us to tears with their “campaigns”. First time round it was a bit of a laugh: a not-very-good 17-year-old song by

a US metal band wiped the smirk off Simon Cowell’s curiously unmoving face and was a bracing slap down to the X Factor musical franchise.

Rage Against the Machine triumphed over whoever last year's X Factorwinner was because it tapped into a mischievous public mood. It was a well-conceived jape that gave everyone a laugh for a few minutes back at the end of last year.

Since then there have been various "hijack" attempts driven by the now ubiquitous "Facebook campaign". There was the push to get Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs Robinsonto No 1 the week that Iris Robinson had her private life laid bare. But no one was that interested, and the real Mrs R simply didn't have the profile/ annoyance level of Simon Cowell.

There’s a big push on this week, though, for the UK No 1, which will be announced on Sunday – and where the UK charts lead, the Irish charts follow. This particular campaign is bereft of any sense of style or substance. It represents a Facebook campaign nadir and hopefully once it’s been done with, it will be the end of the whole affair.

It all began a few months ago, when Ultravox announced yet another "comeback" tour. A fan, Martin Slade, wants to right a historical wrong associated with the band. Back in 1981, Ultravox's Viennasingle – "one of the greatest songs of the whole decade, if not one of the greatest songs ever" according to Slade – was kept off the No 1 slot by Joe Dolce's pre-postmodern masterpiece, Shaddap You Face.

So monumental is the 29th anniversary of this tragedy that Slade has set up a Facebook campaign. You know the score by now: followers are asked to buy the download of Viennathis chart week to ensure it goes to No 1 this Sunday. Such is the way the charts work that if you lobby enough people to buy a song in a given week, you can be almost guaranteed a No 1 single.

There’s some appealing merchandise to coincide with the Vienna campaign. You can pick from campaign T-shirts, bumper stickers, badges, postcards and mugs. There’s also a limited edition “Joe Means Nothing to Me, Oh Vienna” T-shirt available.

But here's where it really deteriorates and you have to reach for the super-strength migraine tablets. A rival Facebook campaign, "Get Joe Dolce's Shaddap You Faceto No 1" has been set up so that Vienna doesn't have a clear run to the top and Dolce can reassert his chart supremacy all over again. Apparently, the Shaddapcamp are busy doing up "Whatsa Matter Ure?" T-shirts as we speak.

When you think of all the great chart battles over the year, the poxy goth-lite of Ultravox's Viennaand Dolce's shameful Shaddap You Facedo not instantly spring to mind. Which is why this puerile tit-for-tat campaign is a tedious distraction. If you're going to launch a stupid Facebook musical campaign for a song that should have been No 1 but wasn't, you would really have to start with Love Will Tear Us Apartand swiftly follow that up with (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.

Come Sunday's singles charts announcement, do try to avert your eyes from the No 1 and No 2 positions and instead look directly at who is at No 6. Yet another Facebook campaign – this one protesting about the BBC's decision to close down the digital radio station, BBC 6 Music – is urging its followers to buy the download of Half Man Half Biscuit's Joy Division Oven Gloves.

The kicker here is that the campaigners don’t want to get the song to No 1; they just want to get it to No 6 – as a symbolic two- finger salute to the closing down of BBC 6 Music.

Stop this Facebook madness now.