Jim Wilcox, Guest Writer
I just can’t face Facebook
Every time my lovely, retired wife tells me what so-and-so wrote on her Facebook page, I want to slam her i Air Pad Lap Top And Otr Thr Ltr Wds shut and toss that little devil into the Afterlife.
(It’s on her iPad Mini, too, but we like to watch Netflix on that.)
I know I’m old—but not as old as I look—so I know I’ve lived long enough to remember that “private” and “secret” and “interesting” were once in the American lexicon. But this instant tell-all-show-all-bore-all phenomenon is TMI, TMI on top of TMI.
Linda “posted” a joke-photo of me on “her page” last week, so her “friends” could thumb it up or thumb it down and “post” inane and unflattering remarks. At last count, she had 50 “friends” respond.
How do that many people have time to Facebook (it’s now a verb)? Here are just some of the things virtual people wrote:
“Hey ‘friend,’ Lookin’ old…I mean good.”
“I rmember when u had hair” (correct spelling is frowned upon).
“I thought you were dead.”
“You had my grandmother as a student.”
“Why the long face, Horsehead?”
Did any of that sound more important to you than the Duck Dynasty episode I was watching? As Jace would say, “No…..it did not!”
Here’s another thing I don’t like about Facebook. People write about the stupidest things on there, as if everyone in the known universe cares:
“I used a new toothpaste this morning and my husband kissed me twice.”
“You should hear what my 3-year-old did this morning. First he colored on his mommy’s lab coat with a tube of her reddest lipstick. Then he ran down the hall (this is so cute) with that lipstick and made a perfect wavy line from our room to the kitchen. Then he turned on all the stove burners and threw his sister’s diary on top. Then when the firemen arrived, he locked the door. It’s like he’s gifted.”
No, enabler-man, your son is pathological!
If Facebook were the only modern substitute for the back of a cereal box, then I’d have to hide only 12 hours a day, but there’s another conveyance of nothingness called “Twitter,” I believe. (The very name sounds idiotic.)
Terse tweets for hash-tagging twits. Isn’t that tweet-mark just the regular old number-sign made by hitting “Shift-3” on a keyboard? Why does it have to be on those tweets? (Tweets? Really?)
These things pop up everywhere. Football game broadcasts, newscasts, sermoncasts, political commentarycasts. Even on “OWN.”
“About our story on the Syrian crisis. Twitter us at Anderson#Coop#er#Hash#tag and give us your opinion. Ten small words or less. But first, this commercial break.”
(Commercial for “Ameripil—side effects may include stroke, hearing things, loss of vocabulary. Some people have experienced tongue tremors.”)
“Welcome back to our show. Now many of you tweeted us about President Obama’s response to the Russian intervention. Here’s some:
‘Now the Ruskies know that capitalism works. PHW#WHP#TAG’
‘I don’t even know what intervention means, but if Obama is for it, it’s E#V#I#L’
‘Did you see Obama on Dancing With The Stars? Was that Putin in tight P#A#N#T#S#?’
Thank you, viewers, for your insightful insights.”
Even some of the birds that come to our backyard feeder tweet. I can’t understand them, either. But I’m learning.