The Feminine Context: 10/9/11

For your amusement, six types of Facebook posters that are probably ruining your friends feed as we speak...

The Incessant Emo (IE)

Everyone has at least one or more of these among their friends. They never have anything pleasant to say. Now, it's not a requirement for me that my Facebook buddies fart rainbows and shit sunshine all day, every day. People normally have good days and bad days. That's fine. The Incessant Emo ONLY has bad days, and has an arsenal of depressing, maudlin, sullen comments to bomb your friends feed with, effectively commemorating every sad moment in their miserable existence. Does this look familiar to you?

Whiny McSadPants: you’re nothing more than my favorite scar - 6 hours ago

Whiny McSadPants: i’m just going to let my silence speak for itself and hope you hear it - 5 hours ago

Whiny McSadPants: i know when im being ignored. - 4 hours ago

Whiny McSadPants: omg i soooo don't need this. work can suck my balls. im calling in again - 3 hours ago

Whiny McSadPants: i need a new job. apparently my old one doesn't recognize depression as an illness. - 2 hours ago

This asshole can't write his way out of an old paper bag with a machete-tipped pen, but I can guarantee you that he's got a journal of "deep thoughts" hidden away somewhere. Probably under his bed, which is, by his own admission(s), is the loneliest place on Isolation Street. If it's not that his girlfriend left him, its that he had to work and missed the midnight showing of "Twilight" and that's how chronically unfair life is to him. When the Incessant Emo ISN'T just whining at random, he has other bad social networking habits with which he will annoy you. Typical IE behaviors include:

- Posting "ironic" graphics. These are often blurry and/or black and white images of people with bad haircuts/piercing choices, looking angry, cold, hungry, sad, or maybe about to hurt themselves with sharp objects. Sometimes it's just a high-def black and white photo OF an object people are known to self-injure with (usually razor blades, but maybe pills or alcohol). The pictures usually have some short text emblazoned upon them, often mispelled, making what was supposed to be an edgy, dark statement into this afternoon's source of point-and-laugh hilarity.

- Posts that are intended to sound like a threat of self-injury or suicide. This are surefire attention-grabbers for people who haven't learned that it's better for everyone to IGNORE them. If you're actually concerned, it's better to send a private message in reply, than to open the big can of pity worms that's ready spring at the press of a "reply" button.

- Posts that link to music videos by bands you've barely heard of. Most of them sound exactly alike.
Not only does he pollute your friends list with his melodramatic outcries for attention, he has a tendency to hijack other people's POSITIVE news with his trademark patheticisms. Sure, when your baby was born he said "congrats", but then immediately updated his own status to something about being alone and how awful the world is.

If they're not "lifestyle emo", then there may be hope that this person will get the fuck over it in a few weeks/months. Otherwise, you're better off deleting some of the unyeilding negativity that's going to continue to flood your Facebook feed for all of eternity, or at least until their mom stops paying for their internet access.

The Edgy Activist (EA)

Your typical EA is either a college student, an adult (often male) over 40, or a stay-at-home mom. These are the people you friend on Facebook because you know them from "around" and a few posted infographics later, you can't help but regret your attempt to be sociable. EAs on my friends list have posted some of the dumbest, most short-sighted, and OFFENSIVE statements I have ever heard, and for me, that's saying something. I've had the entire goddamn internet at my disposal since I was seventeen years old.

I'm one of those crazy liberals, so most of that kind of propaganda doesn't bother or offend me. If anything, I find posts that are in support of gay marriage and women's reproductive rights to be enlightening or amusing, depending on how they are presented. That's not just because I'm a liberal, though. Most of THOSE posts are fairly positive and humorous in nature, trying to make light of a controversial situation.

What I just cannot force myself to get behind are the downright offensive statements that I see circulating about conservative opinions. Sometimes, I don't understand how I got to be friends with people who will post outright intolerance. I'm sure my conservative friends feel the same way about me, and I'm also sure that everyone ends up acting like a EA over some issue or another. The trick is to keep it to a limit. If that's ALL you end up posting about, you're gonna end up getting blocked.

The Mommy Monster (MM)

I'm guilty of being an MM, and most women who've had a baby have gone a bit MM at first. When you HAVE a baby, that baby becomes your whole entire world for a while. It's NORMAL, and it's part of being a good mom. I actually have to wonder about you if your Facebook posts are NOT baby-centered after just having one, it's only natural after going through pregnancy and delivering that baby for a person to want to SHOW that baby and talk about it all the time. I mean, damn, there's NOTHING that most women are more proud of than the beautiful, tiny little human who's so perfect.. aww!!!

That being said, there's a point where you need to calm down a bit.

It's not really the excited mother's posts about her own baby, its the ones about everyone ELSE'S babies. Nothing is worse than the mother who's discovered that her mothering-style is working SO WELL for her new little family, that she now believes its the only way to parent any child, anywhere. In fact, she's so convinced that she knows the way, she has no problem telling all the OTHER parents how to do their jobs better. It's not always a direct order, sometimes she tries the blatantly obvious passive-aggressive route. The MM will wait til another mom posts about her child's allergies, and then make a post about how she's SO glad the SHE chose breastfeeding because it helps to prevent allergies in the future. It's not that the MM's post is incorrect, breastfeeding DOES help prevent allergies and it is the best choice for babies. It's that this particular pro-breastfeeding post came POINTEDLY no less than 45 seconds AFTER the other mother shared her child's allergy story. It's a direct "this is why I'm a BETTER MOMMY THAN YOU" post, and it's a bitch move.

Come on, ladies. Let's try to be good mommies by setting a good example about being supportive and not COMPETITIVE with our friends. You kinda lose some "AWESOME MOM" points if you attempted to boost them by being a BITCH.

The Overgrown Adolescent (OA)

I can make an educated guess here that maybe 70-85% of your friends feed is littered with posts from these bastards, at any given time of the day. You've probably just come home from your job, where you busted your ass for eight hours or more trying to make enough to pay at least a few of your bills, and you open Facebook to see some horseshit like this:

Overgrown Adolescent: OMG. OMG. OMG. Me and Dumbass ClothesWhore need to go shopping!!!! - 6 hours ago

Dumbass ClothesWhore: We need to get tans first! did u see my sisters white-ass legs?? - 6 hours ago

Overgrown Adolescent: ikr?? shes in college and has her own place and a job. like, wtf can't she get a freakin spray-on or something? - 5 hours ago

Dumbass ClothesWhore: don't worry about it. she is like, the death of fun. shes in some boring ass science major so shes probably like, the only woman around. i guess she doesn't have to try around those geeks. - 5 hours ago

Overgrown Adolescent: i can't wait to get to the mall!! my dads all on my ass about getting a job and i told him that i cant afford to get my car fixed. u pick me up right? - 4 hours ago

Dumbass ClothesWhore: o ya.. i got my moms. my sister got it fixed! :DDDDD - 4 hours ago

Overgrown Adolescent: yay!!!!! now we can have our 27th b-day parties together at La Cantina! TEQUILA! - 3 hours ago

You see where this is going, don't you? There you are, tired as hell, with real issues of your own to deal with. You look on your Facebook to see how your mom is doing, or check in on a friend who's been having a rough time with her sick husband, and here is a whole conversation between two worthless bitches about wasting money and other people's time on STUPID BULLSHIT. It's one thing to live at home with reduced responsibility because you're in a jam. It's a whole other level of childishness to live at home and waste what money you can get together pretending that you're one of the fucking Kardashians. Worse still, making a point of putting down people who ARE working to handle REAL problems just lets everyone know that you're a walking waste of your parents time. It's better to cut these people off your list before you end up bashing your own head into your monitor in rage.

The Bitter Divorcee' (BD)

Well, no one can jump on this person's ass too hard. Most likely, their ex has probably done a hell of a job already.

Let's just be honest, this person is just like a terrible car wreck you pass on your way to work. It's awful, and it's scary, and it's upsetting to see, but still.. you can't turn away and not look at it. Watching a breakup occurring between two parties on Facebook is even worse. You may give yourself an internal talking-to about how you shouldn't pay it so much attention, and how awful it must be for both of them. No matter how much you hate yourself for it, you can't ignore it. This is the entire basis for reality television. People are nosy and are compelled to observe tragedy, and personal tragedy is even MORE compelling because its something people are usually trying to cover up.

After someone loses a lover, by any means, its like a limb has been ripped off. Except, they feel socially compelled to pretend it was never anything that they needed (like a limb), and to keep walking along (minus that limb they've become accustomed to) like everything is not only OKAY, but BETTER without it. It's a long process to get over that kind of emotional amputation, and during that process, your friends are going to see the pain no matter how hard you try and hide it. If anything, its worse when you do try to pretend that you're "fine". It's a seeping wound that's going to take a long time to heal, and there's nothing you can do but wait it out.

Why is WHY you shouldn't share posts about how much you're hurting with anyone but people that you can TRUST to handle it. Otherwise, you're running the risk of a flame war started by someone who doesn't know or care enough about you to be sensitive to your condition. Then your friends are going to have to get involved and back you up. More ugliness in the world develops out of breakups than anywhere else, and Facebook is like a petri dish for cultivating interpersonal problems.

The E-Culture Ignoramus (ECI)

I almost titled this one "The Geriatric", which isn't actually fair. I know quite a few geriatric people who are way more technologically advanced than some younger Facebook users. It's true that most ECI's are older, often someone's parents or grandparents, and aren't so much annoying, as they are totally and unintentionally fucking hilarious.

ECIs are mostly new to the internet, or will appear that way forever, coming from a background that doesn't value sarcasm as highly as the majority of internet users seem to. If they did, they would think about what dirty jokes or double-entendres or culture references could be drawn from the words they post, before they post them. If they were even slightly near the edge of average internet humor, they would at least understand the replies they're getting on the seemingly innocuous post they left on Facebook. This does NOT just occur on Facebook, but it's one of the many places it does show up. Here's a good example..

see more Failbook
.............. and the entire internet snickers with glee.
How about this one?

funny facebook fails - Comparing Apples to Ignorance

see more Failbook

I heard another story from a friend who's mom thought "LOL" meant "Lots of love". This resulted in her sending him a text message one day that read "Gramma died lol"
Of course, as bad as this might sound, nothing is worse than parents who actually do know how to post, but don't really have any sense of "netiquitte". Or plain don't give a fuck about it....