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Facebook faux pas

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Facebook is an online community and in being such has developed certain (often unwritten) rules that its users follow. While some rules are easy to understand and abide by, certain Facey situations leave me unsure of what Face-behavior protocol is called for in response to my scrolling.

Posting photos is a FB mainstay. But what do you do when a person posts a photo that is clearly sideways or, worse yet, upside-down? The inverted problem is multiplied 1080 if the post is a video. The person posting must be aware their image is not aligned with the rest of the world – unless they are standing on their head, which I suppose is a possibility.

If a sideways-posted photo looks particularly interesting, I pull it to my desktop and rotate it myself so it is in its full upright (normal) position. But, even if I like the photo, I don’t hit the like button because that would be like promoting bad behavior.

Here’s the thing: rotating a photo on Facebook is not only feasible, it’s as easy as pressing, well, the rotate button. It’s as simple as that. Sigh. 

Next in popularity to photo postings are birthday greetings. Each day Facebook tells us who among our friends is experiencing a 24-hour b-day celebration. As a FB friend or acquaintance it is our duty to come up with a unique and heartfelt birthday wish for each of our 537 friends. Some days this means coming up with more than one unique and heartfelt message because no two birthday greetings should ever be the same. 

When I’m having a noncreative unbirthday-wishing sort of day, I beat myself up for the blasé and boring greeting of, “Happy birthday, insert name here.” Surely the person notes my lack of sincerity and enthusiasm. On those days, I am a birthday greeting failure and do a headstand and look at myself upside-down in the mirror with shame. 

Another birthday conundrum occurs when it is your big day. You receive dozens or perhaps hundreds of birthday hellos, wishes, hallelujahs and other assorted salutations. What to do? Do you thank each greeter personally by responding to their message with a message of your own? If you choose this route, you are saddled to your Facey account for a hefty portion of the day, and that doesn’t feel like a happy birthday in my world. Instead do you simply like each of the greetings individually, or do you take it one step further and wait until the day after your day and send one generic thank you message to the entire group of greeters? I don’t know the correct answer. I’m just posing the question because it’s weighed heavy on my mind for some time. Sharing the agony lessens it, somehow.

Finally (you knew it was coming) let’s talk politics. Everyone else is. It’s okay to have opinions and it’s even okay to post about them because I can scroll through rather quickly, or block repeat offenders if I choose.

Trouble (for me) is that not every posting is factual. There are numerous “news” websites that post satire. Satire is not the truth. It uses exaggeration, irony and sarcasm to create humor. There wouldn’t be a problem with this, if people understood that not everything on the Internet is true (it’s not?) nor is it meant to be. But, many good and trusting FB souls don’t know that – or choose to look past that – and post and repost and like and comment on satire as though it were the truth. And I cringe a little bit again and wonder why I’m even scrolling – again. 

And then I am embarrassed – again. But this time for myself and the things I choose to do and the time I waste scrolling and wondering if the plural of faux pas shouldn’t be faux pases. But it isn’t. Trust me. I looked it up on the Internet.

As I wrote, the list of questionable situations continued to grow. There are multiple ways to faux pas on FB.

There are certain rules – or perhaps better put, norms – Facey users follow. The first of them being: if you take a selfie, you post the selfie. Most people are excellent at remembering to take selfies. Unfortunately I am not most people. I am afflicted with selfie amnesia. I go to restaurants, sporting events and even family get-togethers and completely forget my selfie duties. When I get home and want to report on my adventures, I’m selfie-less and without a photo to accompany my prose. It’s a wonder anyone likes any of my posts. 

We all have lots of friends on Facebook — more than in real life. All it takes to be a Facey friend is the click of a mouse. A real live friendship requires time and effort. I couldn’t possibly have 572 real live friends, but I manage that number on social media with ease. Here’s the conundrum: What happens when one of your FB friends (who isn’t a real friend) is at the grocery store on aisle four at the same time as you? Do you say hello, or do you pretend not to notice them even though you liked their family selfie at the sushi bar less than 24 hours earlier? I don’t pretend to possess the answers. I just ask the pertinent questions. 

Similarly as charming (not to mention awkward), what do you do when you get a friend request from someone you know in real life but aren’t friends with, nor are you interested in becoming friends? Say the loud and obnoxious guy from work wants to be your FB friend. If you ignore or deny his request, he’ll corner you in the break room and create a confrontation you’d rather avoid. If you accept, you’ll be bombarded by his selfies, memes and political comments on your newsfeed. 

Facebook is known for its Like button. People assess the success of their post based on the number of likes it gets. But what do you do when a person makes a sad post about losing their job, crashing their car, a pending divorce, their dog dying or some other depressing news? Some people hit the Like button, I assume to show support for the crisis. I have a hard time with this because it seems I am liking the catastrophe. I could comment, and sometimes do, but we all know commenting requires quadruple the energy of liking. Some people have voiced a need for a Dislike button, which seems reasonable for dire news situations. Mr. Zuckerberg should consider it.

Another situation that makes me squirm is when someone refers to a monumental and life-changing event – either happy or sad – and I have no idea what they are talking about: “I can’t believe this happened to me again. I have the worst luck in the world! Life sucks.” Or, equally excruciating: “I’m on cloud nine! I finally got it! Best day ever!” How do you respond when you are unsure about what you are liking or commenting on? Sometimes another person who is also in the dark posts a comment asking about what is happening. I’m thankful for their candor. I scroll through all the comments looking for the answer from the original poster, but it’s hardly ever there. If curiosity gets the best of me, I go to their FB page and scroll through recent items to see if I can figure out what the heck is going on in their life. I mostly come up empty, so it’s basically a waste of time – kind of like scrolling uncontrollably.

There’s a Facebook faux pas none of us can relate to. 

Jill Pertler is an award-winning syndicated columnist, published playwright and author. Don’t miss a slice; follow the Slices of Life page on Facebook. 

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