I will obey most orders, if the person giving the order is a supervisor at work, my priest (who somehow makes it impossible to say no), my father when he was alive and…..that’s about it.
What I flat out refuse to do is obey an order by a Facebook friend.
A lot of people put political and religious views on Facebook. Sometimes I agree with them. Sometimes I “like” them. Occasionally, I share them. But I will NEVER give an Amen on cue. I will NEVER prove that I agree with helping the plight of dogs by clicking “like” and sharing because you said I had to. If you didn’t say I had to, I probably would have. But telling me I have to do click “like” and share if you blah blah blah is a 100% guarantee that I won’t do it.
I’m Roman Catholic, have a devotion to Mary and hope that I carry Jesus in my heart at all times. My personal position is that it might be cool for you if you do, too. But that is your business. But the minute I read a beautiful prayer on Facebook and am then told to type Amen and share if I believe in Jesus?????? So if I don’t do that, then that proves I don’t believe? I want to shout about my constitutional rights.
So that’s my pet peeve. Please allow me to form my own decisions about politics, religion and the condition of pets and the world in general. Don’t TELL me to write something and share or my opinion doesn’t count. And if you think I have control issues, feel free to keep that to yourself 🙂
There. I feel better.
But, of course, if you want to click like and reblog this, I’m not stopping you.
saneteachers 
I was going to like it and reblog, but then you told me to. You didn’t say anything about commenting though. I agree. The FB junk that tells you to copy, share, like, type Amen is ridiculous. It’s fine to pronounce whatever it is your pronouncing on FB. But there’s no need to tell others to do the same.
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haha I said if you want to, not that if you didn’t it would prove you hate my blog. I don’t know why that annoys me so much. Plus, as if anyone would read another person’s comments and think wow, Barb didn’t click like and share. She must hate world peace.
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I hate those things too. I’m always worried the friend will be upset if I don’t do it, but… I’m just not into mindlessly sharing everything I see. So far, no one has unfriended me over it.
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I definitely share some things. It’s the messages on them that imply we have to that make me crazy. I know most people don’t take it that way. It’s just a pet peeve. I had to get it off my chest lol.
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Ha, I feel the same way. The surest way to keep me from liking something is by telling me to!
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I guess we’re stubborn, lol.
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I concur. Whether I agree with something or not, if status at some point says, “Like or share if you agree,” I’m guaranteed to not do either of those things. In fact, I’m more likely to add that person to my unfollowed list. And if I see a status that begins with something like, “I know most people won’t read this,” I take that as a cue to skip it. When did people begin believing they can make a difference in the world by clicking like on someone’s status update about social injustice?
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Ha that’s perfect “I know most people won’t read this.” Then why are you writing it? This whole blog post might come back to bite me in the butt, because I may have done some of the things that bother other people too. I went off the deep end after the election. Emotionally vomiting on Facebook. It lasted about 3 days. But I didn’t expect others to agree with me. I was expressing my opinions. I like your last sentence. Do you think people really think they’ll make a difference? Or does it just make them feel better?
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Honestly, for the majority of the people I’m probably thinking of, it simply makes them feel better without having to leave the safety of their sofa. Someone who’s just clicking the like button isn’t taking ownership of the issue and they’re not taking it upon themselves to step out into the world and take a stand for anything. As for the status posters, I just think most of those are copied and pasted from someone else’s status. My mother is notorious for the copy/paste status and I’ve fought the urge to block her about a dozen times in the last six months alone. I still haven’t done it, though. I feel like that will be a dark day for our family. Though she’ll never know I’m not seeing her statuses. But, again, that’s because I’m able to passive-aggressively take a stand from the safety of my sofa. Sharing a status or retweeting a hashtag is the millennial way of lying to ourselves about the difference we make in the world.
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WOW. Do you realize how heavy that is? Except I spit out my coffee when I read that you’ve fought the urge to block your mom’s statuses. What you wrote above is a post in and of itself. Please write that. Your last two sentences are very powerful. It would make a wonderful post.
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I might just do that. I’ve thought about writing about this very thing in the past. But I’ve held off… I feel like I could very easily spiral into a rant. But that’s okay. It’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to. 🙂
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Paul did yesterday, I did today. Now it’s your turn. I’m not in your generation, so the millenial viewpoint is interesting to me. My own kids are millenials, but they don’t count because they’re my kids, lol. My son will not be my friend on Facebook, btw. He didn’t block me, he told me from the get-go. My daughter, on the other hand, texts me every time she posts to go read her post.
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I just tried to reply again to you and it just shows up as a regular comment on my own post. So if you are interested in reading it, it was you to whom I was commenting. Not to myself, lol.
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I just spent some time writing a post that’ll show up tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’ll lose some friends over it. But that’s fine. It’s probably time to thin the herd. I don’t know how I ever managed to have over 800 friends on Facebook. I’m pretty sure I don’t even know that many people.
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I look forward to reading it! I have a ton of fb “friends” because I used to play some of the games. A few of those friendships became real ones. A lot I have unfollowed if that was the only basis for any interaction. I doubt they noticed. I think how we interact with social media bears scrutiny. Frequent personal scrutiny.
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Rant! Rant! Rant! Rant! Rant! Rant! Rant! Rant!
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Haha 😁
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I just went over to Facebook and the first 2 statuses I saw were 1) I bet no one will copy and paste this and send to show support of blah blah blah and 2) Type Amen and share to show you blah blah blah. It got me in a bad mood again. I wonder what I post that gets others in a bad mood?
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Woooo hooooo! Amen! Agreed! I have never liked being bossed around and tended to rebel against orders that were not necessary. Please and thank you work much better I think.
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I completely agree with you! So silly to get irked by statuses, but after so long on Facebook, that type seem to be a large number of posts. It just bothers me to no end. Hence….pet peeve! Thank you for your comment😃
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Even though I don’t need it, this is the umpteenth confirmation that my choice not to be on Facebook is 100% right. Everything I know about it and read about it – specially these last months – tells me it’s taken news, opinion forming and civilized discourse into dangerous terrain. It’s proved to be an amplifier for false news and has completely distorted millions of people’s concepts of what relationships and friends are.
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Well said! I think Facebook users have to be
cognizant of what they read and what they say. I’m completely guilty of unburdening myself after our election, and I wish I could retract those posts. But I didn’t expect people to agree or disagree, and I certainly didn’t write anything negative about how they voted (if shared with me). Usually I scroll past most posts, and Facebook has been a vehicle by which I’ve found long lost high school and college friends as well as relatives I’d lost track of. And for my writing….my blog is automatically posted on Facebook as well. I have many readers who only read my blog on Facebook and comment there.
The scary, scary part of social media for me is the influence on teenagers. My oldest grandson is 14, and while he has moved from Facebook to Instagram and Snapchat, what he reads and what he believes about many people frightens me. But that’s another post.
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As I’m not on FB I can’t really add anything, except that based on all the information we have now on how its algortithms work, if I were, I’d get out fast.
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So glad you wrote this! It needed to be said. I don’t like those statuses either that start with what you mention in a comment…”I bet no one will repost this but…” That just guarantees that I won’t do anything. I’d rather post stuff and be happily surprised that people like or comment, rather than telling them to. Then I just feel like a sergeant.
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I’ve wanted to post this for a while, then yesterday there were a bunch of them and I got mad. I like the “sergeant.”
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I am a Roman Catholic too and this is one of the rare occasion when I have stated that. It is not that I am hesitant to speak out, rather I simply prefer to demonstrate my faith by living it the best I can.
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I have written about it here, but in the context of the struggle I had coming back to the Church, and in some family stories. I was hesitant to air my views about my religion in this post, but it was important in relation to the statuses I was talking about. I got mad (I sound like Katniss in The Hunger Games). Thank you for commenting on this.
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I couldn’t agree more! Nothing makes me feel more manipulated than when I’m told that I have to “type Amen if you agree” or “copy and paste, no sharing!” I don’t care if the post simply said it hoped for world peace, I don’t like being told how to react to something, especially if the subcontext is that if I don’t type amen or copy and paste, then I’m somehow and awful person. And as for the “I know 98% of you won’t read this, or do this,” I just think “You got that right” and move on, no matter how much I may like the person who actually posted it.
One other pet peeve from social media: when people put something like a chain letter on my page, saying that now I have to “tag” ten other people or some such nonsense. I don’t like it when someone does that to me, so why would I do it to someone else? Great post…as if you couldn’t already tell, I could really relate to it!
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I feel like you’ve gotten it off your chest as well! I don’t know why it makes me so mad. I believe the people who post these statuses think they are lovely, cute, or just wish people to see them . But I get so annoyed.
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Me, too! And thanks for letting me vent on your post….
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Pingback: A Social Media Rant – The Confusing Middle
I can’t comment other than to say thank you for referencing my blog. I can’t comment because I’m too busy going to visit your blog and read your post. 💟
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I agree with you, completely, Barb. I hate them too.
On Facebook, I unfollow people who frequently share the cut-and-paste ‘click and share’ stuff. Unfollowing means we’re still friends but I don’t have to regularly see the stuff I don’t want to. If they’re people I like (‘like’ as in enjoy as friends and acquaintances) I pop by their home pages from time to time and just quickly scroll past the rubbish posts and, if there are any, comment on their own, original ones. I’ve also taken to using a browser add-on called F.B. Purity (http://www.fbpurity.com) which gets rid of all the ads, the suggested pages, and much of the rubbish Facebook itself puts in the way of what I want to read, but one of the other things it has is an to filter out certain words and phrases, and that’s one way to get rid of the copy and paste stuff (and statuses on topics I don’t care for).
There’s one thing to bear in mind about people who share these, though: they have good hearts. And for me, that’s the saddest thing about it. Most aren’t aware that the posts they’re sharing are just copied from somewhere else and have been doing the rounds for years. I had a friend – someone I’d known since childhood – who used to post these things, almost exclusively. I took her to task for it one day and she was very upset, saying she shared them because she didn’t want to post anything unpleasant from her own life and wanted to try to uplift people’s spirits. And then… one day she was gone. She had died, aged 61. And do you know something? I’d love to see some of her shared statuses again, because I miss her.
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Very well put. Thank you for your words. This is an important comment.
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Many sites (FB as well) can already track what you ‘saw’. Making you click confirms (and kind of broadcasts) what you saw and felt. Some smart programmer then can create a marketing image of you – if you are cat loving or dog loving etc and tailor advertisements shown to you! Its all about someone wanting to spend their advertising money ‘more effectively’
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You’re right. A couple of years ago, I went online and bought a gift card from the store “Theory.” Purchase complete, I immediately went to Facebook, and there were 2 Theory ads on the right hand side of my fb page. IMMEDIATELY.
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