How to Rid Yourselves of Annoying “Holiday/Facebook” Guests
Warning: This is no warm and fuzzy Christmas Column.
You know how some people just lose it some of the time on the old social media? Why can’t they keep it together? Why can’t they have patience? Why can’t they just ignore them? What morons.
Yeah, I’m talking about me.
I’m sorry I can’t help it. And I’ve finally figured out what it is.
Social Media is like inviting 2000 of your closest friends over for Christmas dinner.
Why would you do that? Who wants that many opinions at one table? Who wants that many people who drive you crazy in your house?
Everybody has one or two relatives that drive them insane. Spending an hour or seven with them is eventually pushing you over the edge. You all know what I’m talking about.
That’s what happens to me on social media. Except Christmas dinner never ends!
Back 10 years ago when all this Facebook stuff really got ramped up, we were adding people left and right!
Here is someone I hadn’t seen since high school. Let’s add him. Didn’t really matter you only had one chemistry class together in 1982, and that he was always weird. Maybe he grew out of it.
Boom he’s your friend!
Oh, here’s that girl who always had big hair and that snotty look on her face. Well it was the ’80s. Let’s add her.
Boom she’s your friend!
Wow I just found the dude who always had a cool car. I had a 76 Mustang. It wasn’t cool. Let’s add him!
Boom he’s your friend!
And it feels good to call someone your “friend.” I have great friends who I don’t call “friend.” But oh in the social media world we toss it around without license!
Then as life will be, time goes by and you might have one Facebook conversation with these “friends.”
Maybe a few years later you see the chemistry class guy at a restaurant. Hey you’re Facebook “friends” now. I’d better say hello in person!
And it’s weird. And despite your best intentions, every couple years when you happen to see this person again, you realize you don’t know him at all. He could be a serial killer. He kind of has the looks of a serial killer. Or a bomber. Yep! A serial bomber!
Then there’s the big haired girl. You see her constantly. You never speak. You see all kinds of her way too personal and too private stuff aired to the cyber world. You don’t want to engage her! What is the point of this madness? And why hasn’t she changed her hair?
But your saving grace is the cool car guy. You actually never see him. You haven’t seen him in thirty- five years! But he is so excited to be your friend that he disagrees on every single friggin’ thing you post. For some reason, he feels his opinion, his insight, is tremendously important to you.
What the crap?
I remember being in college and a really old, ancient uncle rolled into town for Christmas. I can’t remember if it was pre or post-dinner, but the television was on. Maybe a basketball game was playing, maybe it was the weather. All I know is all of a sudden, a stream of racial epithets starts flowing from him.
Wow.
How do you respond to your 89-year-old uncle? How do you deal with that kind of ignorance?
Personally, I didn’t. Maybe I should have. I don’t know.
So maybe that’s why on social media, when one of these dopes makes maybe not an outright racist, homophobic, sexist comment, but a slightly veiled one, I feel the need to rip them a new one.
It feels cathartic. It feels freeing. It feels great.
Look my gift to you Facebook “friends” not friends this year is my honesty. I don’t want to have any more uncomfortable conversations when you slither into town for the holidays. I don’t care about you and your husband’s problems. I don’t know you!
And finally, hey car guy, who can’t take a hint, shut up!
Also it makes hanging out with those “problematic” guests at dinner much easier.
Merry Christmas everyone.