Why I h8 Facebook

(sickfacebook)

I visited my friend Sarah this weekend who goes to RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) and is living there for the summer. While staying at her apartment and meeting her friends, I quickly caught onto the fact that, much unlike Richmond, the cool thing to do there was to not have a Facebook. Whether the F-B is too mainstream or too much of a hassle or any other too's I don't know, but whatever the reason, I can't say I blame them.


Reasons I hate Facebook:


1. It forces you to stalk people.


You can just be innocently scrolling through your friend's pictures when someone you don't know with a funny profile picture shows up on the side of your screen and you decide to click it. Before you know it you're analyzing the last picture of your friend's boyfriend's aunt's teacher's grandma's cat's album before you realize you're not only stalking someone you don't even know, but it's a cat.


This doesn't even take into account what you can stalk through people's information, profiles, networks, wall posts... it gets creepy.


2. It helps randos be creepy.


Thanks to Facebook, random people who would never speak to you in real life now have the vehicle to start up a conversation. Who cares if she/he doesn't respond to my "Hey remember me from 3rd grade? Lookin' good lol" or my "Yo im mike u bangin shawty - tryna chill?" or my "*~*~*~Heyyyyy im Alyson, i found your page thru a friend and thought u were cute...wanna come over and feed my bunny with me l8r heheh???*~*~*~" they think, I'll just send it anyway and see what happens. And then, especially if it isn't a rando but a kid from your math class that you've never spoken to, you have to decide whether to respond or pretend you didn't see it and face them the next day. And then comes the debate of whether or not it put you on the level of speaking in real life. It's all too stressful.


This goes for more than just messages, but also for adding people. I understand the excitement of getting into college or a summer program or something and wanting to add every single person that's going. When you first get into college, for instance, people start adding each other before they even get there. You're going to the same college, so it's great and I guess makes you feel like you already have friends there, but on the other hand, you don't know the people at all. They could be anyone. I don't know if this would fall into the creeper category, per se, but I think the overall rule should be that you have to have met someone in person in order to ask to be their FB friend. Except for your future roommate. And potential life partners.


3. My mom has one.


It's not really the fact that she has one that bothers me. It's that it feels like everything's on the table for everyone to see - my mom, my friends' moms, my teachers... it's scary. I feel like if I forget to hit that one privacy setting suddenly my grandpa will be scrolling through pictures of me kissing a Natty Light can, arm slung around someone with a sticky boob on their forehead.


4. Pictures


First of all, if I don't have an artsy enough profile picture, my sister views me as a failure at life. And I mean the whole nine yards: the picture should be taken with a disposable camera for optimal grainy effect, it should be in a cool setting but obscure enough so people can't quite tell the location, the subject should preferably be wearing sunglasses and definitely be looking like I-just-don't-care-and-I'm-kind-of-famous. These are some HARD standards to keep up with in order to succeed at life.


Second of all, pictures that I don't want online being online. My friend from school takes a camera out every weekend and documents our every move, and for some reason, almost all of the time, I happen to be in almost every picture either looking strikingly repulsive, doing something strikingly inappropriate or just appearing strikingly weird. I'm all for a weird pic here and there, but this is album upon album of pictures that, although I've detagged myself, the entire world can still find and view at their leisure. Plus, my friend thinks it's funny to keep them up and funnier to select the very worst picture and make it the album cover. Sometimes life is just too difficult to handle. 


5. Overanalyzing chat conversations


I guess this is the same with any written word (probably worse with texting, etc) but it's hard to keep chat conversations casual without taking something the wrong way or frantically trying to figure out what a person means with their vague "K's" or responses that could be taken one of two ways. The person on the other end could easily be in a dire situation where they can't talk, or they're genuinely tired or writing a paper, but suddenly you're in the fetal position on the floor of your room crying to Alanis Morisette because Nick Has Gone Offline.


 6. Wallposts that people write just for the sake of other people seeing them


For example: "The shore is so much fun right now, lol :) ;)" ... "I can't blieve what we did last night.. omggggggggg" ... "we need a reunion with all of our guurrrrllllsss!!!!!!!!!!! call me beb."


We get it. You're kewl. 


7. Most of all, the fact that everything you post is for the sake of other people looking at it. Facebook is a social place; nobody makes one just for his or herself and everything you post is with an audience in mind. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can be when you start creating a FB alter-ego of the person you want to be and then can't follow up with it in real life. It's admittedly tempting and hard to avoid because while meeting someone in person gives you seconds to communicate to them who you are, Facebook enables you to lay it out on a page and spend hours editing every last detail. You can show a carefully crafted image of yourself where nobody will see anything but what you post. And it's great, until the real life part comes along.




Maybe I'll join Sarah and get off the Facebook bandwagon someday. But only if enough people Like this. Lol.