6 Instances In Which To Shut Your Yap on Facebook
1. When you feel the urge to bash someone.
I get it. The whole point of social media to express opinions, share the details of your life, and stay connected with your friends and family members across the globe. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can talk serious shit while thinly veiling someone’s identity just because you don’t like him or her, for whatever (usually stupid) reason.
If they didn’t do anything personally to you, then keep your judgy-mcjudgerson comments to yourself — or at least keep it between private conversations within a close circle of friends. We’re all aware that so-and-so gets around, but is that any of your business? Negative. And wasting your time with a post about it for the world to see makes you no more the better than your target, because it basically defines you as person nobody can trust, ever. If they did do something that influenced you personally, then put on your big kid undies and take care of your business like an adult. I’ll admit, there was an occasion that I recall passive-aggressively bashing my son’s father on Facebook, but it was more of a heartfelt shout-out to my own (awesome) dad, as opposed expressing all the ways in which my baby daddy “was” a douche.
Unless you’re very close to the said person you want to bash, you literally don’t know their life, so don’t act like you do. And even if you are close…see #2.
2. When you’re arguing with your family/close friends.
I personally know how it feels to want to just completely bitch it out on good ol’ FB when it comes to family drama. Trust me, I’ve had to bite my tongue more than once. But the truth is, unless you really want to throw gas on the fire, this isn’t going to get you anywhere near a resolution for your troubles. Your family members may eventually forget what you said…but they will never forget how it made them feel (I stole that from Pinterest). Again, with the trust. If you ever want your quibbling family members or friends to rely on you, you can sure as hell bet they won’t if you air their dirty laundry in public. My advice for dealing with this sort of drama is the hardest to follow: give it time. Shit’ll eventually buff out or settle down. And if it doesn’t, be mature about solving the problem.
3. When you want to brag. All. The. Time.
I’ve got a kid of my own and since my life quite literally revolves around him and his needs, most of my Facebook activity generally does too. It’s all too easy for for me to proudly declare my little tot’s latest accomplishments, or funny things he does, or how cute he is (because he is really freakin’ cute, and funny, and…yeah) and some people (who usually don’t have kids) may find it annoying. Honestly, there’s no way not to be annoying at times on Facebook. That’s not what this article is about. This about being a decent human, on or offline.
It’s wonderful that you have things to be proud of—things that you have worked hard for—but it’s the obnoxious, constant “look what I have that you don’t have” attitude that really pisses me off. So for those of you a-holes out there who want to continually gloat about how much money you have to spend on dumbass clothes that are preposterously over-priced or a car that you don’t even know how to drive, directly from me to you: nobody cares. Hush.
4. When Sanctimony Sets In
You feed your child all organic foods and refuse to vaccinate them, and may the world hear you roar about all the rationalizations you can dish up! You are a free-thinking Christian and none of us are on your level! You are such a charitable person that you refuse to wear shoes so that you and you alone feel the same pain that the impoverished children of the world feel!
Nobody is as good of a person as you are. We should all give up now.
OR…you could just do all those things and not be so Pecksniffish about it, mmmk?
5. When you see an obviously fake news link …
Somewhere out there, one of your less-educated friends is going to see that link and believe it. #DontSpreadTheDumb.
6. Anytime you want to complain about the not-having-of-something-you-don’t-need.
There is always something to be grateful for…do I really need to tell you this?) There are millions of people living on the same planet that you are who don’t have what they need, much less what they want. You may think you need the latest phone or gaming system or whatnot—which of course, you don’t—and you’re seriously delusional if you think griping about not having them on social media means you deserve them. Just pipe down, and go work for it.