The 10 Commandments For The Internet
- Thou shalt not chat me when my chat status is set to “Busy” unless it has clearly been established that that is acceptable behavior. I set my chat status as “Busy” to indicate that I am, indeed, busy. I am not lying. Moreover, thou shalt not feel dejected when you chat me when my chat status is set to “Busy” and I subsequently take a long time to respond to the things you say.
- Conversely, thou shalt not ‘disappear’ when we are chatting. If you are going to leave the conversation indefinitely, please tell me so that I can close our chat window and not sit there thinking our conversation is still kind of happening. I dislike feeling that way.
- Thou shalt not email and/or chat me asking me for information in the case that said information can be easily attained by a Google search.
- Thou shalt not pressure me, in any way, to respond to your emails. I will respond to your email on my own schedule. Thank you for taking my preferences into consideration on this issue.
- Thou shalt not CC me on an email only slightly relevant to me, and then, after I don’t respond, keep me CC’d in the 100+ email conversation you and your insufferable friends continue to have. I am not waiting around in anticipation of the next flippant one-line email that is going to come my way. Please take me out of your CC if I am not participating.
- Thou shalt not post pictures of your penis on Twitter. That is weird. No one thinks grainy cell phone shots of penises are even remotely arousing.
- Thou shalt not post information about that one time we hooked up on my Facebook wall. Moreover, thou shalt not post overly emotional or intimate information on my Facebook wall. It makes me uncomfortable. Please consider that half my Facebook friends are people you and I hardly know. Some of them are coworkers. Please don’t make me uncomfortable.
- Thou shalt not tag me in all 200 photos of the party you took last night. I look bad in half of them. Some of my Facebook friends are potential romantic interests. Please don’t embarrass me.
- Thou shalt not forward me joke or inspirational emails. They are for old people. I am not old. Those emails will not make me laugh nor will they inspire me to do anything other than click the “delete” button.
- Thou shalt not mass Facebook invite me to your event, especially if I live in a different state than you. If I don’t already know your event is happening (via being your friend), then I probably don’t want to come, or I live like 500 miles away. In any case, thou definitely shalt not mass invite me two or three times to the same Facebook event because you forgot to add the address of the event, or something. That is supremely annoying.