5. Bitching About the Timeline Switch
You know what you should really be bitching about? Not having access to clean water, medicine, or an education. Oh wait. You live in the first world and do, in fact, have those things. Quit complaining and use your voice to do some good in the world.
4. Using Pinterest to Plan Your Wedding…and You’re Not Even Engaged
Seriously, ladies. It’s just sad. Not cry for you sad, but wince at you sad.
3. Passive Aggressive Whining or Boyfriend/Best Friend Bashing
Yes, making this example orientation specific serves the stereotype of the whiny straight girl or drama queen gay, but guess the hard truth is, friends? I’ve never seen a straight guy or gay girl write a status like this:
If you have something to say, say it. To your therapist. To your private journal. To their face. In a phone call. In a heartfelt you really hurt my feelings and here’s why email. Not on Facebook, for the world at large to see. It’s sort of a Peter and the Wolf thing: the more times you wax poetic about something that doesn’t matter, the less likely I am to recognize you have something important to say.
If this particular form of social media has done nothing else, it has extended the span of high school he said/she saids well past graduation.
2. Politics, Politics, Politics
This goes for members of both parties and their outliers. Unless you have a good bipartisan punchline or news source to share – without commentary – I don’t want to deal with it. Similar to how you’re not supposed to have conversations about money or religion in polite company, politics should be set aside. Which is not to say that Facebook is polite company, because it clearly is not.
1. Excessive Updates of Your Future Family
Do you remember plastering on a fake smile when Creepy Uncle whipped out a slide show of the family Grand Canyon trip? Well slide shows were a bit beyond my years, actually, but you get the point. No one not on your trip – and often those who were on it – cares to experience your experience in images.
This goes double for your developing child including – but not limited to – actual sonograms, weekly documentation of your growing stomach in profile, and how doting your parenting partner is. (Obnoxious social media behaviors do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.)
If people – namely, your immediate families – want to see pictures of your trip into parentdom, they’ll ask. You can set up a Flickr account, they can print a poster of a fuzzy black-and-white Junior You and paint a pink or blue bow on it for all I care. As long as it doesn’t pop up on me without warning. Seriously – if I see on vag shot a la Knocked Up or high school health class, I’m off of Facebook forever.
Lest you think me heartless, I do want to extend compliments to my lovely friend, Victoria, who has yet to be removed from my feed even though she’s currently baking a bun in the oven. If you’re going to announce what sex your baby is on Facebook (at least to people not important enough for a personal delivery, like I was, NBD) this is a good way to do it:
What kicks someone off your News Feed?
