My Friends are Stupid

One of the many challenges I'm facing right now is how to successfully bite my "tongue" on Facebook.  I feel fairly safe writing this here, because although I have 299 "friends" and the URL for the blog is right there on my damn profile, no one cares enough to come here and read what I really have to say, even my closest friends.  I could pretty much call people out by name here and no one would be the wiser.  But I won't, even though it would give me a perverse sense of satisfaction.  I'm evil like that.

It may be that Facebook itself is my problem.  Wait, that's not fair--I shouldn't blame a perfectly innocent and benign social networking site for my antagonistic attitude.  I do, after all, have the option to STAY LOGGED OUT, although what a novel idea that is!  It's not everyone on Facebook that drives me to roll my eyes, stick out my tongue, or cuss out loud to an empty room.  It's only the stupid people...but BOY are there a lot of those!

Just on a whim, let's see if I can come up with a list of my pet Facebook peeves.  I may actually be guilty of some of these myself, but I will definitely call myself out if that's the case.  Nothing but honesty here, folks.

1.  If you know me, you had to know that the first item on my list of things that burn my butt on Facebook falls under the extremely broad category of Blatant Inability To Speak and/or Write Basic English.  This tragic and extremely irritating disorder includes, but is not limited to, the following symptoms:
     a.  Confusion/Misspelling of the words their, there, and they're; too, two, and to; your and you're; then and than; etc.

     b.  Use of texting acronyms, including BRB, IMAB, 2Maro, CYA. (Okay, occasionally an "LOL" crosses my keyboard!)
     c.  Bad grammar. 

     d.  Lack of, or misuse of, appropriate punctuation.  Use a period every now and then!

2.  "Liking" so many things one fills up the News Feed with the little blue blurbs advertising them.  If you

           want to tell people that you "live for Christ," love to play Yahtzee, or now understand that "An 'ex' is

           called an "ex" because it's an EXample of who you shouldn't go for again in the future," then TYPE it

           and tell me about it in your own thoughts, for God's sake.  How much should I believe this thing

           means to you if you had to wait for someone else to say it so you could agree?

3.  "Muah!" 

4.  People that make vague, distressing comments about rough times as if they are just waiting for someone  

     to ask, "What's wrong?"  If it's that big a deal and you want people to know, just SAY IT.

5.  People who are clearly close friends having private conversations on their walls and filling up my News Feed with it.  Call each other, or text!  I don't care about what time you're going out, reading your inside jokes that make no sense to anyone, or any of those other things that belong in private conversation. 

6.  Fishing for compliments, such as "List three words that describe me."  Is anyone REALLY going to say what they think?  "Bitchy, skanky, and disturbed" would not go over well!

7.  I might catch it for this one, but what the hell?  People who say/write, "My God is an _________ awesome God..."  Isn't it good enough to say, "God is good" or "God is great"?  Why does it have to be YOUR God, as opposed to HIS or MY God?  While we're at it, that's not grammatically correct anyway.  Just as one should never capitalize words such as dad and mom when using a possessive pronoun ("my"), one should also not do that when referring to God.  He can be your god, or he can be God.  Pick one.  (This grates me to no end when people say this in the face of personal tragedy, but that's a philosophical discussion for another day.)

8.  Friends who want to share every song that's running through their brain that day.  I have done this on special occasions, or to dedicate a song/video to someone.  But, people, let's keep it to no more than one a day, shall we? 

9.  People who make disparaging personal, philosophical, or political comments without regard to the friends of friends who might be seeing, reading, and hurting as a result of those close-minded, bigoted, and downright ignorant statements.  Think what you want, and I support your right to say it, but don't be surprised or offended if I delete you from my friends list with a message explaining why.

10.  And last, but not least, people who announce pregnancies to their entire Facebook world at all of three weeks into the pregnancy.  This one has come up quite a bit lately (the whole world is apparently pregnant right now) , and while I understand and empathize with the excitement you are feeling, 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and you'd save yourself quite a bit of pain if you'd just keep it under your hat until you've seen the doctor, seen the heartbeat, and are at least far enough along to have missed a period. 

I think I have decided, after writing this list, to "weed" out my friends list and just delete the people who annoy me.  (Life should be so easy!  Not in a killing sense of course, just prevent them from being in my life.  Hah, that doesn't sound much better, does it?)  After all, Facebook is there for entertainment, and entertainment should be FUN...and if all I'm getting from YOU is aggravation, then you aren't very entertaining.  And that last sentence is why I shouldn't post in the middle of the night when the only thing open is Tautologies-R-Us.