If You've Got Love In Your Sights / Watch Out, Love Bites
- Def Leppard
Time To Hate On The Facebook Status Update
Dear Love Bytes,
I’ve noticed a lot of my Facebook friends trying to out-do each other with their Status Updates. I can’t go five minutes without Joey Debate Captain (last spotted in the first row of AP History with a "kick me" sign affixed to his back) spraying everyone with his quirky take on the global financial crisis. Then we have Walt from Accounts Payable. By day: balding cubicle slave lacking even the most basic social skills; by night: witty purveyor of Family Guy one-liners tweaked oh-so-perfectly to the rolling ups and downs of everyday life. And don’t even get me started on the steaming heap of balderdash related to sports and the 2008 Presidential Election. Oh, and I’d be remiss to leave out the tech nerds who spam the network with blog posts on each and every iPhone hardware and software update…thanks buddy, but I actually don’t carry on intimate relations with my handheld device, so you can leave me off the distribution list for now.
Given this sad state of affairs, what is a normal Facebook user to do?
Thanks,
Frustrated Facebooker
Dear Frustrated Facebooker,
There are legions of flaming morons out there. At one time, these poor souls had the good sense to keep their mouths sealed in public. They quietly raised families, worked the 9 to 5, and volunteered in the community. In general, they just shut the hell up. It's very possible that idiotic musings swirled through their minds like a squirt of Hershey’s syrup spooned into a glass of milk....but they kept quiet about it. Then…BOOM! Social networking came along. Suddenly, they had a powerful platform on which to dispense lamely unhilarious observations about the world at large. Alas, we know how the rest of the story goes. The Facebook Status Update is an oil derrick drilling into the collective dunderheadedness of the human race.
A good rule of thumb with the Status Update is to ask the following question: If I spoke these supposedly insightful/funny/meaningful words to a level-headed person on the street, could I reasonably expect to get socked in the jaw? Would a workaday person shake his head in confusion, wondering why I’d wasted precious seconds of his life with my bland, quotidian observation? Might he spit in my face at my laughable half-baked attempt to make like this generation’s Larry David? In the meantime, Frustrated Facebookers everywhere can use the Comment function below Status Updates as a defensive tool against idiocy. If somebody’s blabbering on like a fool, give them a sock in the virtual jaw.
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