Facebook Pet Peeves

We can be honest here, right?  I hope so.  Because honestly, sometimes I feel like I live on facebook.  My life wasn't always like this, and I trust it won't always be.  But right now, as I work from home and some days have about 12 minutes of work to do, "home" and "facebook" can start to blur together.

I bring that up because A. as I just clarified, this is a place of honesty, and B. when you're home, you expect people to behave the way you want them to.  So the more that facebook feels like home to me, the lower my tolerance becomes for people who violate my internal set of facebook rules.

But I can't complain, because I've never explicitly told anyone what these rules are... until now.


Facebook Rules*^


1. You better use your last name. 

I've never really understood this.  For some reason, some girls (and only girls) feel compelled to be known on facebook only by their first and middle names.  I can only assume this has something to do with privacy, but with all the privacy settings available (including the ability to be invisible to any non-friend), I don't understand how there can be any real threat of stalking.

The reason this matters is because WHO ARE YOU??  When you come up on my newsfeed as Elizabeth Joy, Shannon Kristen, or Anna Lisa, I have no idea who you are.  The time it takes to visit your profile and use my detective skills to figure out who you are is time I could have been... um... I don't know, doing something better.


2. Can you change that wedding profile pic after, say, 6 months?

I'm sure your wedding day was the most wonderful day of your life.  And that's awesome.  But when you've been married for a year and you still have the same black and white picture of jumping down the aisle that you put up the day after the honeymoon...

Look, I know it's probably just the cynical, doesn't-like-weddings part of me talking.  But like I said, it's my home, so could you maybe change the picture after we've all lost our short-term memories of your big day?

Not to mention, haven't you done anything else fun this past year?


3. You can either invite a million people to an event or repeatedly send a message to all invitees, but not both.

Having a small get-together and need to send out 8 last-minute messages?  No problem.  But if you have, via your friends' friends' friends, invited 13,000 people to some charity barbeque, how dare you spam them all with message after message?  If I were willing to devote more time to this, I could probably make some equation that relates the number of invitees to the number of permissible mass messages.  But alas, even I have other things to do.

The real issue here is that the little red talk-bubble icon up in the corner is exciting.  When I log on and see that I have a new message, I'm happy.  But, seconds later, when I see it's some change in plans for the car wash I was never even considering attending, that happiness is instantly transformed to annoyance.

What's that?  You say it's all my fault for putting too much emotional stock in getting messages?  It's my home.  Get out.


*This is a list of rules for facebook, not simply a statement that "Facebook rules!!", though that is also true.
^These are rules for my guests, i.e. those people still on my newsfeed.  There are many, many more general facebook rules (e.g. no Farmville), but since violators of these rules are instantly and eternally banned from my home, i.e. removed from my newsfeed, such rules have been left for another discussion.



It's your home, too (or at least pretend it is)

What are your biggest facebook pet peeves??

Jon

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