8 Social Networking Sins We Have All Witnessed

It is a credit to Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook remains the most popular procrastination tool amongst school and university students, with the number of users far surpassing those of old forgotten favourites Bebo and MySpace. Aside from the obvious perks of stalking former or potential suitors, and looking at photos to remind us of the hazy events of the night before, Facebook enables us to ‘remember’ our flatmates birthdays, organise massive events at the click of a button and keep up to date with our friends’ exciting ‘gap yah’ adventures in South East Asia. 

These perks are, however, inevitably accompanied by some downsides. The impending fear of future employers discovering photos of you sprawled drunkenly over street curbs, tables and toilet seats, whilst wearing a traffic cone on your head. The fact that people you haven’t spoken to since school know you have been dumped within a half hour of a relationship status update. Plus there’s the risk of one day being able to speak from experience when liking the page ‘the awkward moment I spend too much time on Facebook and fail my exams’.

For me, the biggest problem with Facebook is the users themselves. Perhaps this stands as a testament to how often I access the site, but I have begun to spot irritating patterns in user behaviour that quite frankly tempts me to log off completely – although I’m fairly clueless about Twitter and I’m not even entirely sure what a Tumblr or a Flickr is. It is often said that ‘sharing is caring’- as such I feel it is my duty to raise awareness of these Facebook misdemeanours in the hopes that just one user may read this and think before they post. These are, in my opinion, as follows:

1.      Persistent profile abuse from friends – It becomes a widely accepted fact in halls that if you leave your laptop or smart phone unlocked in a communal area, something will happen to your Facebook page. We have all done it! However, when you have confessed to the contraction of 10 STI’s in one week and have had five birthdays so far this year, it is probably time to change your password, as the joke wears off pretty quick.

2.     Describing your night on the sofa in a painfully detailed status– No one cares that you are sat in your pyjamas at seven in the evening on a Saturday, watching Take Me Out and eating your body weight in half-price Ben & Jerry’s. They especially don’t care if this is a ‘perfect night in’ with your ‘boy<3’.

3.     “Checking in” everywhere you go – Particularly when the exciting location you want everyone to know about is Level 8 in the Edward Boyle library.

4.     When people are tagged with the same unnerving photo face in every single photo–In ninety percent of my profile pictures my face is turned at a forty-five degree angle away from my parting, with a controlled closed or open-mouthed smile. However, if I were to spend my entire night at Fruity pulling this face I would look ridiculously creepy. When meeting someone, you would not greet them with your ‘good side’, determinedly keeping them from seeing the rest of your face. Nor would you persistently pout, lean backwards or keep your head tilted to the side. Who are we trying to kid when we attempt these poses in every tagged photo, regardless of the setting? A Facebook profile isn’t a modelling portfolio – a few silly faces and a caught-off guard dancing moment make you look like a much more interesting person.  

5.     Statuses indicating that something is wrong, particularly the universally understood sad smiley “L”– Do five hundred people really need to know you are upset? The people who urge you to ‘inbox me, babe’ are the only ones that need in on this. Pick up your phone and do it privately.

6.     Statuses designed to generalise a comment about one person – Having once been the – not so subtly concealed – victim of such a status, I can verify that the subject knows it is about them, and regardless as to what sort of heinous crime they have committed to warrant such a status, anyone else that reads it is going to find it awkward that you haven’t just confronted the person directly. But this in itself should never be done over Facebook, bringing me on to: 

7.    Playing out your friendship or relationship drama on everyone’s Newsfeeds – Single/In a Relationship/Single/In a Relationship/It’s Complicated – you do not need to change your relationship status every time you have a fight. Nor do you need to post sad song lyrics – Adele’s Someone Like You seems a particularly popular choice. When the aforementioned cryptic status is adorned by comments from the warring parties and strategically placed ‘likes’ from onlookers, things just become plain embarrassing.

8.     Posting a status about how you are “Soooo0000ooo drUnkkxzzxx riigeht nowwww” every time your sports team, society, or house goes out – This is usually to be followed by a graphic description of the inevitable hangover that follows the next morning.

Although, perhaps the biggest Facebook crime of all is setting your profile to private, because where is the fun in stalking your boyfriend’s ex or the girl your housemate pulled in Mission last week if you can’t see whether they are guilty of any of the above? Let’s face it, while we can all identify the perpetrators of these crimes and confirm that they are annoying, we must admit that sometimes it is fun to revel in other people’s online mishaps. Why else would you have Facebook open in the next tab as you read this, with an untouched textbook and an essay for Monday at the back of your mind? In its own words “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life”, whether that be through direct conversation or a sheer nosiness.