January 30, 2011

• I don’t like Facebook, but I've never bothered to ask myself why I felt this way until recently—when I kidnapped tricked drugged and dragged hired a foreign exchange student to maintain my account. It sounds pretentious, but I’m just way too busy pretending to be busy to log into my site, so it makes sense to have someone else do it for me.

  

  

  

  

  Wait until he finds out that instead of travel visas, he’s getting paid in “Trident Layers”!

  After putting some thought into it though, I realized that what I detested wasn’t actually Facebook, but Facebook Whorism.

  First, a bit of terminology: Facebook Whores are attention whores with Facebook pages; Facebook Whorism occurs when a Facebook Whore uses his site to get attention by posting every damn detail of his life: what he’s reading, what he’s wearing, what he sees when he looks out his window, what he thinks he should be seeing when he looks out his window—anything and everything a person could possibly post is all right there on a Facebook Whore’s page…and in real-time too, because he has that Facebook app on his phone.

  Facebook Whorism is the real reason why I don’t use Facebook. Signing in and then being faced with a never-ending list of stupid status updates no one gives a sh*t about—it definitely tests the limits of your sanity…just ask my foreign exchange student.

  

  It’s not even like I have a lot of attention whores as friends. Of the 70 or so people on my list, only 3 of them qualify as Facebook Whores. Just 3—which is what, like, 4% of the group? And yet, my “News Feed” is mostly stuff about them because the rest of my friends don’t post stupid sh*t.

  Having been force-fed a lot of Facebook Whorism, I’ve noticed that although my “News Feed” page looks like a giant cluster f*ck of other people’s diarrhea, there are actually categories of diarrhea within the diarrhea. What I mean is: the pointless status updates that make up Facebook Whorism can be broken down into types—which I like to call “Sh*tnanegans.”

  I know I just used a bunch of random terms in my post, so here’s a diagram that will hopefully make things less confusing:

  

  OMG...this is the worst diagram ever.

  You can tell a status update is a Sh*tnanegan when it leaves you wondering, "Why are you showing me this sh*t?!" (You've seen more than your fair share of them, I'm sure.) And while there are a number of Sh*tnanegans Facebook Whores use, there are some that I find more annoying than others:

          1. You’ve Posted a Picture of What You’re Eating But...

  

  You're only eating cereal! Hello! No one f*cking cares!

  Now, if you’re eating or drinking something so out-there that most people don’t even know it exists, and will probably die without ever having the opportunity to consume it—e.g., monkey’s-brain milkshake or real ants-on-a-log, and not some celery stick covered in peanut butter and raisins—then that’s definitely worth posting a few photos of.

  But if you’re posting pictures of a bowl of “Froot Loops,” a cup of coffee, a stick of gum—if it’s something so ordinary that any of us could get our hands on it at any time, then don’t expect a reaction other than, “Why the hell are you showing me this sh*t?”

  No, really, I’m seriously asking you: Why the hell you are showing me a bowl of cereal? Because unless you and your friends come from a place where cereal costs an arm, a leg, and half of an albino child, no one is going to care that you’re eating “Froot Loops.” And the same goes for that bag of “M&Ms” you snacked on yesterday, the apple and can of soda you posted a picture of, along with the caption, “My sad lunch…”, and the package of taco seasoning you bought for the tacos you were planning to make for dinner. The only thing those pictures are getting people to notice about you is that you’re an even bigger Facebook Whore than they originally thought you were.

          2. You’re Posting Up-To-The-Second Updates About Your Trip But…

  You’re only going to the grocery store! No one f*cking cares!

  This Sh*tnanegan isn’t limited to trips to the grocery store. It also covers trips to the post office, school, the mall—it pretty much applies when all you’re doing is leaving your house to run errands or hang out somewhere, but you’re posting status updates about it as if you’re on some kind of fantasy vacation.

  This doesn’t mean you’re committing a Sh*tnanegan just by announcing to everyone that you’re going somewhere. It’s only when the status updates go beyond the initial “Going out to blah blah blah” that you start to enter Facebook Whorism territory. I’m talking about stuff like this:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  And you’re sharing this with everyone because…? I mean, the only explanation I can think of is that you subconsciously want someone to rob your ass blind, and that’s why you’re telling everyone when you’ll be out of your house, and for how long.

          3. You’ve Posted Updates About One of Your Achievements But…

  You’ve been bragging about the same thing for 6 months now! No one f*cking cares anymore!

  I’m all for giving credit where credit is due, and I think a person who has accomplished something is allowed to toot her own horn without looking like she’s full of herself. But judgment-free tooting doesn’t last forever, and if you continue to talk about your success after it’s become stale news, you’ll find yourself knee-deep in Sh*tnanegan-ville.

  This is how you go from announcing a personal achievement to announcing you're a desperate Facebook Whore. Say you've just landed a new job (which happens to be the 7th job you've had in the past 15 months...and everyone knows it's because your 6 previous employers fired your ass for being such an abrasive b*tch):

  

  

  

  

  By the time you finally stop talking about your "new" job, everyone else has already stopped caring about it...and you.

          4. You Post Super-Emo Status Updates Whenever Someone Dumps You But…

  …I already wrote about this back in 2008.

  I know there is an option where you can hide updates from certain people, but I would have to log into my site to activate it—which doesn’t make any sense to me. You have expose yourself to the mindless news feeds before you can block them! As in, you actually have to face all of the crap your Facebook Whore-friend forced onto your “News Feed”—like how she’s so tired at 1:32 in the afternoon, or how she needs everyone's opinions on whether she should wear a black T-shirt or a red one. By the way: How the hell can a person be that indecisive? It’s not humanely possible! But I guess Facebook Whores are willing to act like useless bags of sh*t if it gets someone—anyone—to pay attention to them.

  You know what? I’ll just stick to my current routine of only checking Facebook when someone complains about how I haven’t responded to the friend request he sent me months ago. It's safer to do it that way. Unfortunately, however, I can't rely on my foreign exchange student anymore because he just killed himself.

  

  • 2:54 pm
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