I love Facebook, you love Facebook, we all love Facebook. But I think we can agree that it can use some improvements. And no, Zuckerberg, we are not (with all due respect) asking for another news ticker on the right-hand margin. Thanks, and no.
First of all, if you have a one-woman show/apartment to rent/ lost your phone/birthday party and invite all 501 of your facebook friends to your “event”, YOU’RE DOING FACEBOOK WRONG. If you can take ten minutes to write a snappy description for your event and post pictures of your drunken duckface to the event’s photo “album,” then you should expend the same amount of time discerning which people to invite to this event. Your decision process should involve going through your friends list and asking yourself the following questions:
Is this person close to me and likely to want to “attend”? = yes, invite them!
Does this person live 800 miles away and we haven’t spoken since that one time we met 4 years ago? = NO, DO NOT INVITE THEM as they will NEVER, EVER travel 800 miles to spend $15 plus a 2-drink minimum to hear you do a 10-minute comedy set. Sorry. But that’s reality.
And can we PLEASE. Stop reposting gross pictures to increase “awareness”.* Hey, how about instead of spoiling my breakfast, just donate money to the cause? Slacktivism at its worst. Maybe you have a perverse desire to look at tortured human/animal bodies in your news feed, but I don’t. And until Facebook invents a setting that allows me to opt out of such photos, I cannot change the channel like I do when that Sarah MacLaughlin ASPCA commercial comes on, so I am blocking you. Maybe instead of proselytizing on Facebook, you could be volunteering at an animal shelter. Or getting some therapy. Sheesh.
And WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT of re-posting photos, can I just say that we all hate Mondays, we all wish cupcakes had fewer calories, and we’ve all seen grumpy cat! There is not, to my knowledge, a setting on Facebook that allows me to block from my newsfeed unless I prohibit myself from viewing ANY photos you upload. And I don’t want that to happen. I like looking at pictures of your food, your pets, your drunken duckface! This is how we stay in touch in the 21st Century! But I have seen the same passive-aggressive generic sentiment appear on my homepage time and time again and I have to tell you, there’s a special place for that. A whole seperate website where the whole purpose is to re-post pictures of Grumpy Cat hatin’ on Mondays. And it’s not Facebook. It’s PINTEREST. So unless you have something unique, novel, or original to say, please don’t just “share” photos willy-nilly. That’s mindless and boring. If all of your Facebook friends jumped off a cliff holding a picture of Grumpy Cat, would you do it to?
The answer is yes, but only to raise awareness for animal cruelty.
And when you do, please please please refrain from “inviting” me.
That is all.
* please note, I am not making light of the atrocities in this world, nor the need for us to be made aware of them. However, as news-watching and internet-savvy adults, we are all aware of the horrors in the world and sometimes use Facebook as escapism. Certainly there are other forums out there to share your disdain for wrongdoings of society, and I do not condemn anyone for genuinely trying to make the world a better place – merely those who choose the “easy way out” by making others feel bad for not doing something. Altruists should always be celebrated, and condescension condemned /rant.
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