Facebook is a place where you can update friends, family and creepers with your silly, depressing and rarely informative day-to-day statuses and show them photos of how you’ve grown (whether it be vertically or horizontally). It’s where you give them Big Brother-like access to your exact location at all times. There’s no argument that Facebook’s an excellent tool to stay connected with others – whether you like it or not.
Many use Facebook innocently enough – posting Lemme Smang It or Lady Yankin can provide hours of musical entertainment and Best Cry Ever can offer a nice ab workout from the belly laughs. However, we all know that some of our friends take sharing to the next level. Yep, they decide to hike it up a notch and enter into the crazy over-sharing world of Facebook relationships.
Don’t get me wrong. Love is a many splendored thing and sharing something like that with someone else is amazing. Letting your 800 Facebook friends know that you are taken and happy can be a helpful update – so-and-so is now in a relationship with so-and-so (cue the awwws). Maybe that creepy guy from IHUM will get the picture and stop trying to add you. However, there are, naturally, the few people in the Facebook community who share a littletoo much lovin’ (if ya know what I mean).
Everyone has witnessed abuse like this at least once in his or her lifetime:
Evelyn Casto
i love you Aaron Thomson!! this past one and a half months have been the best of my entire life!!!! EC <3 AT love you babe you are my world!!!
Aaron “Couldn’t Live Without You” Thomson
aww thanks babe i would kill a small village for our love :)
Barf.
Frankly, it’s unnecessary and overdone. Wall posts, statuses and couple photo shoots should be done in private — and in person. It’s pointless to change the status from “in a relationship” to “it’s complicated” to “single” and then back to “in a relationship” over the course of an hour-long fight. I promise, we really don’t need a minute-by-minute play of how things are going, and it’s sort of ridiculous when you replace your cutesy statuses about your significant other with depressing, cliché ones about turning a new leaf or about opening and closing doors( or worse – emo song lyrics. Seriously, ease up on the Elliott Smith already). We get it. Couples fight, some more than others. However, there’s something special about a private relationship — one that isn’t posted everywhere on Facebook.
This reminds me of a simple saying, usually said by an older female wagging her finger: “Cover up! Leave more to the imagination.” It’s some great advice that also applies to relationships. Be discrete about the happenings in your love life, i.e. wait until someone asks you about it to spill. Don’t go around Facebooking details about the last date you two shared together or about the last thing he bought you. It’s not as cute as you think, and honestly, no one cares that much about it. So, take this advice to heart, and the next time you find someone new in your life, simply change your relationship status and let us ooh and aah over it. Then, let it be. It’s the basics of Facebook Etiquette 101: How Not to Annoy Your Facebook Friends.