Failbooking...an irritating adventure in socail media.

I resisted Facebook for a couple years. Mister had an account and I knew OF Facebook, but had no genuine interest in being sought out or found by anyone and kind of felt that if I was meant to keep in touch with ghosts from the past I would have. Well that worked for a couple years, and then I caved. My excuse for caving was family. Mister's entire family lives out of state and I am shitty at keeping in touch if it involves the telephone and where as I am pretty good about replying to emails I pretty much suck at sending them, and I missed them. Me & the Mister have been a pair since way back in the high school days...his parents and sisters are just like my own (we have both known each others sister for more than HALF their lives. Fuck we're old!) and long story short I liked being able to keep in touch relatively effortlessly and stay up to date on the daily comings and goings...

Well it didnt take long and I was found by a ton of old high school & college friends, random people I had worked with, and just folks I had fallen out of touch with as we grew up and became "adults", just like happens to everyone Im sure. And I dug it. For awhile. It still makes me smile that I get to interact with so many people that I would not otherwise, I have rekindled friendships that I value and didnt know that I missed and have even got sucked into a couple of those stupid games for a bit before I realized that the HUGE time suck they became was detrimental to...well living. Well that and I got bored with it honestly. It would be nice if people only updated their status with clever and witty things as opposed to a running diatribe of their mundane existence...or even worse - what Jane Pitt so succinctly summed up in a status update of her own this morning - VAGUEbooking. This is the art of putting up a highly dramatic yet completely uninformative status update (like OMFG why does this shit happen to me?!?!?) basically pandering for people to fawn over what could possible be wrong with you so that you can just not tell them - if you are one of those people I have probably blocked you - because that shits ANNOYING. If its a big enough deal to make the effort to type an update just SAY it for fucks sake...but I digress.

So last night before bed I was surfing the interwebs and popped into FB for a quick visit and saw an update that irritated me. Not because the updater was wrong...but because they were just plain dumb. Doesnt matter what the update was, but it sincerely made me want to comment on the drivel, and I opted not, mainly because I really do not care if the judgmental prick lives the rest of his life alone - and I hid him instead. He can be blissfully unaware of his own hypocrisy without having to bother me about it.

I hopped on my trusty MAC this morning to check emails and such before I left work and cruised FB. And then I got irritated.....

•  In my feed this morning I see an updating asking people to stop using curse words in their status updates and lets all try to keep FB nice and clean. Not an unreasonable request really, but brought to mind this question - Why is it ok to ask people not to curse or use offensive language in THEIR status updates? This same individual is a Born Again Christian - and litters her feed with it. I find that offensive, ok well maybe not offensive - but definitely irritating. I respect anyone's belief and faith, but I do not want it rammed down my throat in status updates. I deal with your religious zealotry without commenting, you can deal with a few curse words in status updates without feeling the need to police it. Free speech bitches! Respect it! And a big fat KABLOCK for that one....it was a recent friending and obviously a poor choice.

• There should be rules to being allowed to post anything political on there. 1) you have to actually read, from more than one source, information about the topic you plan to preach about and Fox News is NOT allowed to be a sited source. 2) You must be able to participate in a discourse about your rant, if and when that happens, without resorting to name calling and finger pointing - you do your point no justice when you cant defend it intelligently. 3) You must be able to acknowledge that it took decades of BS government to get us here and holding any single one individual (esp the one we are currently beating the shit out for not being able to wave his magic wand and fix it as quick as wed like him to) responsible is complete and utter BULLSHIT. That is just reality and fact. All political opinions aside - the poor chump that got elected last time, regardless of their political affiliation, was going to be handed the biggest shit sandwich ever created and to expect anyone to solve decades of abuse, misuse and poor decision making in 4 years is just plain fucking stupid, I dont care what you believe in. If you dont meet the above criteria keep your damn mouth shut, all youre doing is embarrassing yourself and pissing me off.

• And this is a very recent annoyance...but it seems my feed is littered with people that are so sick to death of their children and they just cant wait to send them back to school. Seriously.  You decided to birth them, this school schedule thing is no surprise, been this way forever...shut up already. The same things happens at every long school break. Honestly I cant imagine I am the only one who doesnt want to hear about your little terrorists driving you nuts. Now if the story of them driving you nuts is funny - the PLEASE share - kids funny stories are awesome...but if your only intent is to whine about your choice to reproduce or inability to entertain your kids for 2.5 months - hush up & consult the Googles - there a bazillion cheap & easy things to do with kids out there...get off FB and go do some of them. Maybe your kids are obnoxious because they want some attention or to go outside and play.

• STOP FUCKING WHINING ALREADY!!! Some folks do it via vaguebooking, some are a hell of a lot more detailed than others and maybe I just have a large section of rabid miserable FB users in my friend list but holy shit these have got to be the most unhappy, unsatisfied and miserable humans on the planet. They NEVER have a positive thing to say and are just gigantic steaming piles of bitter negativity. My suggestion - spend less time whining & posting about the awfulness that is your existence and go out and DO something about it. Make a difference, change it up, find something that makes you smile, go get ice cream...whatever it takes...but FIND a glimmer of happy somewhere. And if you cant or wont, call a friend who can actually help you, dont put a faceless plea on FB, it doesnt come across as sincere, its comes across as whiny and pathetic. Call me cold, but if was ever in dire need of something, anything really...the last fucking place I would ask for help is on FB. Thats what REAL people are for.

I'm coming to the conclusion that I was right when I was dodging the Facebook & MySpace (I never had one of those pages there either really) thing. Yes, there have been some pros & for those I am thankful, but on the over/under all I think it really has done is reinforced my belief that most people are completely unaware of themselves and how they affect the world & people around them, have some very serious ego issues (what would ever make you think that anyone gives a rats ass about your step by step progress through the day? I dont even think Mister needs or wants a play-by-play of my every waking moment & hes married to me) and that most people are sheep that will believe whatever they are told first. All of that saddens me and also makes me stabby.  If FB is any indication us smart people (and yes I count myself in that category) are severely outnumbered - and that is kind of scary.

Will i delete my account? Probably not, I really do like keeping in touch with my family.

Should I delete it just to save myself the aggravation? Oh yeah definitely.