Ah, social networking. You’ve come a long way and everyone’s using it. But maybe it wasn’t meant for grandpa or Grandma Sue, or that person who continues to blog and re-tweet about their shiny dog’s paw bracelet. Leave it to TheFrisky.com, (www.thefrisky.com), the website covering everything that matters to women 18-34 to point out some of the most annoying ways people have abused sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Amelia McDonell-Parry, Editor-in-Chief of TheFrisky.com shares some of her entertaining (and sad but true) examples below:
1. Hint, Hint, Hint: People who use their tweets or status updates to send not-at-all-subtle messages to someone on their friend or follow list make me extremely uncomfortable. For example:
“I’m thinking about you. Yeah, you. You know what you did. And I won’t ever forget it.”
This move is not only passive-aggressive, but it’s downright weird and creepy.
2. Become A Fan (Of Me!): Here are some of the things I am a “fan” of on Facebook: Barack Obama, The Beach, Breakfast Tacos, Ryan Gosling, and I Heart Sleep. I am not a fan of my best friend from first grade or my mom or my boyfriend, so why the eff would I be a fan of you, person with no discernible talent who I don’t know nearly as well? People who create fan pages for themselves, even though they don’t do anything, make me crazy. I get a little shiver of delight every time I enthusiastically IGNORE these requests.
3. Manic And Excessive Retweeting: Really, you loved four dozen 140-character tweets by other people so much, that you had to retweet all of them within the span of an hour? I get the occasional retweet, when something someone says makes you laugh hysterically, or a link totally strikes your fancy—but seriously, do not retweet every single thing from The New York Times and your great aunt Mildred because it litters my feed, dammit.
4. Bragging: This one is a personal beef of mine, linked directly to my own jealousy. I wish I got two weeks off and went on vacation over the holiday, but I didn’t and that’s cool, whatevs. But on Monday my Facebook feed was littered with braggy, annoying messages like:
“Ugh, I SO wish I was back in Peru smooching my boo on the beach instead of at work. Can I have another month off, like, now? Guess life could be worse, right?”
Right. Screw you.
5. “Excessive” Use Of QUOTES And ALL CAPS For “Emphasis”: This was posted as a status update over the holidays by a member of my own immediate family:
“Where the hell did the last TEN YEARS go?!?! Oh well…“au revoir” ‘09…I won’t miss ya! 2010, I’ll rise again! (No, uh…not “Jesus”...ME! I’ll “rise” to meet the challenges instead of lettin’ them BEAT ME this time!)”
Being this is my kin we’re talking about, I cannot defriend him or her, though I suppose I could gift him or her with an AP Stylebook for Christmas next year ...
6. Twitter Is Not Your Fitness Diary: “Just ran five miles, off to yoga!” “Wow, can’t believe I did 20 pull-ups five days in a row!” “Ugh, so sore from yesterday’s three hour triathlon training sesh. Gonna take it easy today and just do Bikram.” Your constant tweets about how much you work out are giving the rest of us fat slobs a complex and we are unfollowing you so that we can eat cheese doodles in peace. Buh-bye.
