Facebook Sucks: Stupid Things People Share

Note: I wrote an entire ebook about Facebook and why it sucks. Check it out if you’re interested.

Let me be totally honest here: I’ve started writing this post over and over about five times now and nothing seems to work. Nothing flows right. My intention, upon scrolling Facebook and being totally pissed at all of the low-quality shit that people share, was to make a blog post about it. Usually I try to write an introduction that eases into the topic while sometimes asking interesting questions about it. With this post I might ask why people share so much stuff in the first place. Why don’t people make their own posts as much as they share? And so on. But hell if this post isn’t just a collection of shitty memes from Facebook. I don’t even want to attempt to be “deep” about why people share this shit: I just want to bitch about how shitty these things are. This list is also not exhaustive and there very well could be a part 2 or a part 3 to this someday.

And let me be honest one more time: these shitty images were filling up my phone’s download folder and made it a miserable place to be. Once this was posted I could delete the damn things leaving the folder filled only with amazingly funny and clever memes, because I have the utmost refined comedic tastes obviously.

Mildly Amusing Sexist Jokes

These are really stupid to see and they upset me greatly. I’m not even upset much over the sexism (and this goes both ways depending on the actual image, sometimes it’s women being sexist towards men) because a joke is a joke. I’m willing to laugh at almost anything because as long as you know it’s just a stupid joke and there’s no I’ll will behind it, who cares? What bothers me most about these is how goddamn cheap they are: they’re lazy jokes. Take this one for example:

Haha right? Women wash dishes! That’s their job! You thought the meme was talking about an actual dish washing machine when you read it, right? Gotcha! No. No you didn’t. The joke is so obvious that it isn’t even funny. Part of the humor in jokes is not seeing any immediate connection between the setup and punchline and then figuring it out. There’s an “a-ha!” moment that makes the joke funny. These lack that cleverness.

They’re also shared almost exclusively by older people who apparently have a fondness for this type of humor. It makes me wonder if in 30 years I’ll be sharing jokes that aren’t funny on whatever social media is around then. I fucking hope not. But a few younger people share them too, usually males (obviously). They’re typically the people you’d expect to share them too. They’re the ones constantly posting sexual memes and jokes (almost like trying trying to end up on r/ihavesex on purpose) and have a general sense of vulgarity about them. Luckily I’m not friends with many of these people so that’s good for me at least.

Sports

Take a look at this:

Okay. I don’t even know what to say about it. You don’t like the Packers. You watch football. It’s a Packers’ logo on toilet paper. You know, what you wipe your ass with. Ha.

Shit like this is usually shared by the demographics from above, but you could find any diehard sports fan sharing it as well.

2deep4u Posts

Here ya go:

These things are exhausting because they’re everywhere. I’ve always liked to bitch amount images that are just images of text, because, why? For fucks sake put some background on it or something. Even worse are the 2deep posts that are pictures from someone else’s Facebook post. Like this one:

Making things even worse is the fact that many of these actually have decent advice to them. The first image is a perfect example of this: the actual words make sense really. Sometimes it is wasting your time to talk to a headstrong dumbass. The problem arises because the person sharing the image is likely to be one of these people, ironically. If you really felt this image resonated with you you probably wouldn’t be sharing it on social media. Also, with the multitude of these on social media they lose their meaning an effectiveness. After seeing 30 of these every time you look at Facebook, you simply find yourself not caring about them anymore.

Remember when I mentioned that social media should be a conversation deleted and rewrote the introduction? A two-way conversation? These fail miserably on that goal. Even if the outward appearance is one of information — what if the poster just wanted for other people to see it? — they’re usually posted to say something about the sharer and aren’t directed to an audience at all. The poster is saying something about themselves — that they can understand different perspectives and aren’t a dumbass — and how deep and complex they are. It’s egotistical as fuck. They’re not trying to prompt others to keep an open mind, they’re only circle jerking themselves.

2deep4u Fake News?

This one is a subset of the 2deep4u posts but with the added benefit of having a questionable factual basis:

I don’t know anything about wolves really, so maybe the image is true, but my bullshit radar goes off anytime I look at it. The worst part? Posts like these you’re not bothered enough by to actually fact-check them. While I suspect it’s bullshit I don’t want to make an effort to find out it actually is bullshit.

Informative Fake News

A few posts might actually be helpful or make some sense at first. Like you can tell the sharer isn’t being self-centered or looking for attention and is actually trying to help their friends and family have some useful information. Once again many of these set my bullshit alarm into high gear. Here:

Floor polish and pumpkins? Once again I don’t know enough about the ingredients of floor polish and how pumpkins decay so I can’t outright say that it’s bullshit, but come on. This one I’m not even going to research either. I don’t want part of my internet search history to be about floor cleaner and pumpkins. The next time I’m on Amazon I don’t want endless ads for Brite floor polish.

Or this one:

Its not really informative like the pumpkin one but it still purports to have an interesting fact that, once again, screams of bullshit. In fact I’m like 95% sure it’s bullshit. Even worse is the woah reacts to it that I’m assuming are from people who gobbled up the bullshit like a swarm of hungry flies would.

And this:

There’s a general theme here of my ignorance on a topic giving claims something to work with even if I suspect there’s bullshit around. Once again there are claims that seem factual; charcoal can affect medicine uptake, but is charcoal used to color food that much? It seems like it would affect the texture or something. Who knows. After some quick Googling apparently charcoal is used to color foods, among with other possible ingredients. Basically known what your medicine shouldn’t be taken with and figure out if charcoal is in your food. Which you should’be been doing even if you didn’t see this shit on Facebook!

I think the same will be true for my conclusion paragraph as the introduction paragraph. I don’t have shit to say and am just going to stop. If anything, check the shit you share for factual basis before sharing it. I can’t believe I even have to mention that.