Tech Stuff - posted on May 20, 2009 by Wade Biery

BITE BACK THAT STUPID FACEBOOK (MySpace…etc…) POST!!

Full disclosure, I do it too. All the time, so don’t think I don’t know that I’m right in there with everyone on this….

You’re sitting there thinking “I haven’t “said” anything on Facebook for a while, if I don’t people will “forget” me, so I better keep myself visible”……as though you’ll be “missed” in that endless avalanche of posts…..

Or you’re some kind of artist/musician/creative who has read one of those books telling you the “Path to Success and Riches” lies on social networks, (never mind that by the time the book comes out, the info is already obsolete, if it was EVER true, since what they are trying to do is “get rich from Facebook” – by selling you their dumbass book, cause they couldn’t make it happen by doing the things you just paid them to tell you to do).

Or (this is me BTW), you’re seriously political and really think everyone really NEEDS to know something you’re pretty sure they don’t already know…….even if the reason they don’t know it is because they don’t give a shit…..but of course then you KNOW they SHOULD, so you post it anyway……..like an asshole…

So far in just the last few minutes I’ve been looking at the site, people have posted about –

• their jog
• their sign
• their sales goals (and maybe YOU’D like to buy something)
• their lyrics
• that they are killing weeds
• that they’re not “gonna stop till they get enough” (WTF?!?!)
• that they love spring weather
• that they are going to clean their gutters
• that they have completed yet ANOTHER quiz (it seems EVERYONE on Facebook is just DYING to know what they think/know/feel about every conceivable thing in life, but apparently they need to take a quiz to find out just exactly what it is they think/know/feel).
• a “Da Vinci code” type series of numbers, (I guess we’re supposed to spend time figuring out what it might mean)

Etc etc etc….you get the point, just random shit that absolutely NO ONE cares to read when someone else posts it, but everyone thinks will be interesting when THEY post it.

But it’s not.

In fact it’s just as boring, irritating, pathetic, ill-informed, or whatever you think when you see someone else do it…..when YOU do it…..

Even this post is all those things, I just feel like I need to say it. And that I have the right to make you read it. Man I’m an asshole….

Funny, I’ve recently had conversations with some good friends about how I need to edit myself more, I tend to say what I think and it has cost me over the years, as well as hurt people when I wasn’t trying to…..and OH BLAH BLAH BLAH, shut the fuck up Wade willya?!!

See what I mean? It’s just keyboard diarrhea, and everyone knows it but you, unless they are doing it, then it’s REALLY INTERESTING.

But it’s not.

Here’s what a friend says about Faceboook, from a chat we’re having while I write this –

ME – I’m writing the meanest Facebook post about Facebook posting…I’m gonna be hated

HIM – nice, I rant about Facebook to everyone.

ME – Facebook is great used well, and a torture chamber the rest of the time

HIM – When people ask me if I have a Facebook acount i say this…

HIM – “I do not have a Facebook account, and I’ll give you $20 RIGHT NOW to cancel yours.”

ME – And no takers?

HIM – nope

HIM – people are addicts

ME – yeh

HIM – I’ll do one when I have a band name.

HIM – but not personal

HIM – Some fuck from highschool contacting me is my biggest fear.

ME – I’m gonna cut and paste your story in this post

HIM – please do.

HIM – Calling BMI for royaltys

ME – Eat a knife

(BTW, this guy is a serious death-metal industrial type shredder guy, but as far as I know has not one tattoo, and looks like a tall skinny version of Clark Kent. Go figure….)

Leaving aside all the Big Brother implications of putting every single little thought that flies through your head and every mundane boring thing you do in the day, out there for anyone to read, as well as entering it into a massive database of info about yourself that never goes away and grows every time you post, leaving all that aside…..if someone else writes it, do you think it’s interesting? Really? And since you probably don’t, why do you think it’s interesting when YOU do it?

I don’t get it……except when I do it, because then I KNOW that you need to know what I want to tell you, like this post.

I know a bunch of people are probably not gonna like what I’m saying here, and in a way I’m sorry about that, I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, especially my friends who read this and will sometimes see themselves in it and think I’m talking about them specifically, (and I might be).

But in another way I feel like I have to do it, because if I don’t I’ll either have to start blocking a bunch of people’s posts, or just stop using Facebook entirely, because I can’t sift through this shit any more. And the bummer is that then I’ll miss the sometimes VERY interesting and useful things that DO get listed….I DO want to know about your gig, (I might be looking for something to do that night), or that your Mom just died (it looks like my uncle just had a stroke), or that you just figured out you’re gay, (…….ok, I don’t have an example for that one), or any number of things that really ARE interesting, or important, or that I didn’t already know.

It’s a huge time-waster, and in the end I’m starting to wonder if everyone’s lives are really that boring and mundane to begin with, or if Facebook is MAKING their lives that way. Either way I just can’t get excited about emptying litter boxes or what a quiz says about the numerology of your name, it’s just Vaseline on the lens of life for me.

Except for this post, it’s REALLY interesting and exceptional and everyone should read it, because I WROTE IT!!