ChickinStew

Friday, April 12, 2013

The Daily 'Dislike'

Things that happen in real life often piss me off, and I am not one to mince words--but often I feel constrained--by my job, politeness, relatedness, what have you--from expressing my true thoughts about these things, so I create rants in my head that (to me) sound like the rants of a stand-up comic (or a crazy person--fine line there). So I'm going to start recording them here. For my own sanity. Here goes.


Facebook



1.
You know I am continually amazed at the ridiculously personal shit that women of all ages share with the internet, unbidden. I scheduled a Facebook invite for my birthday that included one 20-year old from my Zumba class. At the last minute she couldn’t go, but instead of just changing her response to ‘no’ and telling me a reason later, she posts, ‘Hey, I have a mouth infection so I won’t be able to make it tonight.’ Really? You needed to reveal THAT to 20 people you don’t know who are also on my invite? Plus, despite what you think, I really didn’t need to know that. Where is the shame??


2.
How about when people post something clever/humorous on Facebook, and everyone is all, ‘oh I’m going to steal THAT,’ and they lick the screen because they can't like it enough. And then they re-post it and people compliment them like they wrote the fucking thing. I posted an article on FB this week and one of my work ‘friends’ asked me in person if he could re-post it on LinkedIn. My response? ‘Uh yeah, sure, dude, I didn’t write it.’ I just want to scream at these people, ‘just because you post something on Facebook doesn’t mean you own it or are in some way due compliments for its content! You know that 'some e-card' you posted last week about drinking wine out of a purse? Yeah you found that shit online, in fact you’re like the 10th person who posted it this week in my feed. So original. Unless you wrote a hilarious status update, you don’t get credit for re-posting something that someone else created.
Get over yourself.



3.


Have you noticed that women of a certain mindset loooove posting self-righteous quotations? You know the type--they typically contain some generic feel-good sentiment that falls into one of three major categories: 1. the lobotomized religious quote that reassures the paranoid delusionals that Jesus is everywhere; 2. some passive-aggressive bs about relationships that obviously reveals they've been burned in some way; or 3. being unafraid to be the strong woman you already are but can't be because you're hemmed in by society/yourhusband/yourkids/yourdog.


I say ‘women of a certain mindset’ now instead of 'a certain age' because just when I was formulating my theory that all women over 45 think the point of Facebook is to post asinine shit, I friended someone from my exercise class who just turned 30, and SHE PUTS THEM ALL TO SHAME. These women post the HELL outta that shit, with no apologies. IMO, they are ABUSING the internet and should be blocked from Facebook. Forever. Posting a gagillion quotations is usually a one-way ticket to 'I WILL HIDE YOU'-ville, but lately I've started unhiding these people because I wanted to start analyzing this shit. You know, for educational purposes.



Take a look at a handful of posts from yesterday's feeds:



The editor in me sneers at this one because it could have benefited from a little restraint. The text runs into the people, for chrissakes, and the word 'class' is used twice. I don't think half the people who re-post these someecard gems realize that ANYONE can create their own some-e-card. Thank god.


These hastily-handwritten ones are making the rounds lately. I imagine the author was so inspired that he/she just didn't have time to properly fashion their quote using one of the many sites on the Internet, they only had time to take pen to paper and take a picture with their phone. Such was the nature of their inspiration.



I like how this one is actually credited to someone, to lend it an air of credibility. Here, we have a narrator who is clearly the subject of her own novel, because she thinks by declaring something should be so, it makes it so. And way to foster the stereotype that all women in leadership positions should start as annoying little bitches.



Really?! I am?? Well I'm glad someone noticed, even if it's just me, posting this and then reading it back to myself on Facebook. If this is true, why don't more people choose to be single?


No, the smile on your face means you've either been lobotomized or you're a smug son-of-a-bitch. I'll go with the latter.



Oh I'm not afraid of being myself. What I'm afraid of is this woman getting splinters from humping a broom.



The best for last. One of the commenters on this one actually sums it up the best:


In case you can't read it: "Sociopaths believe and act on these impulses not rational people." A-MEN! So there are some rational people still out there. Good to know.

And if you can read the first few comments above, apparently women fall down and intentionally cut themselves on posts like this so they can share with TOTAL STRANGERS how something bad happened to them once. Well thank GOD you overshared that with me otherwise I would have never known that I hurt your feelings with my random comment, total stranger!

Full circle.