Hear ye, hear ye!
The apocalypse is near! My father has finally gotten a Facebook
account! The man who gets annoyed every time the phone rings has
willingly decided to sign up to be bombarded by political cartoons,
pictures of people's children, requests for borrowing eggs from
people on the other side of the world, and status updates from people
whose friend requests he only accepted out of politeness and plans on
defriending after an appropriate amount of time (a month seems about
right).
Everyone has
different uses for facebook. I mostly use it to look at pictures of
koalas eating leaves and videos of porcupines eating bananas. Some
people use it for stalking high school classmates to see which of
them are doing better than themselves and which are in prison. Some
people use it to widely distribute messages in the hopes of getting
at least a few responses- anyone going out tonight, anyone know where
to buy a circuit board, anyone have an extra blow up chair in the
shape of a duck? Those kinds of messages. Some people use it to see
what their friends are up to without actually having to talk to them.
Everyone uses it for stalking people.
What my father
uses it for, I don't know (since I've refused to friend him). He only
has 2 friends. On a good day. To be fair, that's probably more than
me but I can't really see him stalking people he's just met, which is
what, um, other people use it for (don't judge me- it's normal human
curiosity). He's a follower of the “don't ask if you don't really
want to know” policy. My mother is not wise enough to have learned
this. Or maybe she just does really want to know. The
difference between them is that you will never hear my father asking
how a person lost his limb, what the surgery's for, or why the
marriage didn't last, etc. This leads me to conclude that my father
is not interested in going through people's facebook pages looking
for clues about their hobbies, marital status, religious and
political views, and family relationships. This also leads me to
believe that my mother should probably not be let out unattended. She
has occasionally wandered into restricted areas out of curiosity and
probably has a file with several government agencies (in several
different countries) after being flagged for asking the wrong people
the wrong questions.
I understand that
different people have different needs when it comes to facebook and
everyone uses it differently. The problem is when my facebook needs
and other people's facebook needs are incompatible. I just want to be
amused. Funny pictures and cartoons, and amusing anecdotes are ok by
me. Post a funny video, make me laugh, and I'll be happy. You don't
have to announce to the world what you ate for breakfast, your
exercise regimen, or what time you went to bed last night
(incidentally because you were on facebook all night instead of
sleeping). Basically any conversation I don't want to have with you
face to face because it's boring is one I don't want to read about on
facebook.
I also am not a
fan of public meltdowns via social media. I recall a certain very
long facebook post concerning the depressed mental state and terrible
anguish of the author. I certainly wasn't going to be the one to ask
what the matter was but someone else made the mistake of doing so. It
turns out she had dropped her phone in the toilet. This is why I
never ask. The poster is just waiting
for someone to ask about their cryptic post. Well I refuse to fall
into that trap. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise I'm
just going to ignore it. Or better yet, maybe I'll start responding
to these posts in riddles:
Random person
who likes to write ambiguous posts:
Want to lay down on the ground and get traipsed on by homeless
people.
Natania: 42
and yellow!
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