Patrick's Place

(Link in meme-roll)
Sunday 7

Name the seven items in the list of reasons someone might want to slap a Facebook user that would most annoy you.

1. My first one isn't on the list, but pisses me off more than anything else: people who hijack your post and start a flame war in the comments. I have a nephew who does this regularly, and seems completely tone-deaf about it. Then again, it might be a cultural thing; another person did the same thing with something I posted last night. Both these folks are British. {lol}


2. Next up is also not on the list: people who create a Facebook account and post a picture or maybe one status update...and then never, ever return. Thanks. Why bother?


3. This is very similar to my second one: y'know those causes that crop up periodically? Like when SOPA was about to be voted on in Congress in January and lots of people (including me) turned their profile photos to black squares? OK, there are still people 'protesting' that, with their black squares. Hello??? Issue is resolved (for now), move on. Related to this is all the people who climbed on board with Invisible Children against Joseph Kony but did absolutely nothing besides sharing the video and saying how bad he is. Uhm, a little research, and maybe a little active (financial or other) support goes a much longer way, folks.


4. Oversharers. I really do NOT need to know how many inches of intestines were removed during your surgery. Nor do I want to know in excruciating detail what you and your S.O. fought about this morning.  This is a fine line, of course, and what I consider an overshare might not match up with others'--e.g. I used Facebook to update family and close friends about Beast's surgery last month, but I did at least try to only post the personal stuff to people fitting that description.


5. Finally hitting the list...REALLY HATE people who post about their games to everyone. It's not that hard to set up a group of people with whom you play that game so that you can just pollute their walls with your need for plowing, assassinating, or assorted building materials. Which is why, friends, if you don't play The Sims on Facebook, you might not even know I do.


6. I'm not a fan of incessant notifications but that's not really the fault of my friends, it's my fault for not setting up the notifications right. So, yeah, this basically isn't an issue for me, anymore, though it used to be.


7. Chronic status updates also annoy me, but honestly most of my friends are too busy to do this. I can think of two people who abuse the updates, and I mostly don't see them anymore because I basically never reply. It's interesting, actually: a coworker shares websites and other Fb posts a lot but that doesn't bother me as much as those friends who just post personal stuff every couple of hours: "I'm tired, gonna take a nap" is way more annoying than "Hey look at this fun video/explanation of how to put a duvet together easily/museum exhibit that started this week."

Here's the thing: a lot of the behaviors that are annoying on Facebook are every bit as annoying in people IRL. People who hijack conversations annoy me a lot too, as do people who can only talk about their Desperate Problems all the time. There's also a difference between teenagers who do this--because they generally are clueless about social niceties--and adults--who really oughta have a clue.