The Antisocial Network

I'm a little sick of Facebook. At this point I think everyone's a bit tired of Facebook but we can't pry ourselves away from it because then we'd be cavemen. Or rather, cavepeople, to be gender neutral. This is 2011 after all.

Instead, we complain about Facebook, usually on Facebook, and I'm more than happy to join in the discord. I've compiled a list of ten common occurrences that bother me about Facebook and I'd like to share them with you.

1. "Caught Off Guard" Photos

I see this all the time in my news feed and I'm baffled by it. These photos pop up and I just have so many questions. What are you girls looking at? How are the vertebrae in your necks not snapping like twigs?

I blame Paris Hilton for this one. Actually, I blame Paris Hilton for about 90% of the world's problems (famine, global warming, the NBA lockout, the list goes on).

2. Duck Lips

I know, I know. Everyone and their grandmother has harped on the duck lips phenomenon, but it bears repeating because it remains a problem. It's still happening. How is it still happening? Why aren't we as a society funneling trillions of dollars into educating our young people against this habit? I have it on good authority that making duck lips causes face cancer. So what if there's no medical proof to back up that claim? Do you really want to risk it? I didn't think so.

3. The Apparition

This one is understandable to an extent, though no less tragic. It's when people take photos of themselves but push the levels in Photoshop to the extreme, and what's left is a white floating mass with eyeballs and a mouth. Michael Jackson utilized this tactic fulltime in later years. I'm guessing its purpose is to hide the imperfections in one's face, but the end result is anything but an improvement. It's the opposite of an improvement. An unprovement? Nonprovement? Yeah, nonprovement. That's a word.

4. English as a Foreign Language

I have a friend who frequently makes the argument that language evolves, but I'd like to know when Internet jargon became an acceptable form of communication outside the realm of sexting your boyfriend during fourth period. It's gotten so bad that on occasion I'll have a difficult time making sense of certain status updates because they're so riddled with shorthanded phrases and netspeak. At some point they stop sounding human altogether, instead resembling an alien with a feeble grasp on the language of Earthlings.

5. Woe is Me

Social networking has understandably become a part of our day-to-day lives, and thus aspects of our lives play out online. However, I grow weary of watching arguments unfold in real time on my wall. True, on occasion I get a kick out of seeing two of my friends quarrel; they'll hurl insults back and forth about who's a bigger bitch or who's the Mayor of Slutburg this week, but when my friends take to Facebook to passive aggressively whine about their lives, I want to throw in the towel and do something drastic like unplug my router and go read a book.

22 replies later, I'll learn she was upset because her mom got her the wrong flavor of frozen yogurt from Pinkberry, and wish I could get back that 90 seconds of my life I wasted reading that thread.

6. The Racist Redneck Cousin

We all have one of these on our friends list. You can't remove them or else you'll get an angry email from Aunt Susan about why you unfriended her son. It's best to ignore them completely.

7. The Facebook Gamer

For a long time I forgot Farmville even existed because I had all mentions of it blocked, but a few weeks ago my account went screwy and I started receiving notifications about it again. I readjusted my settings, but it made me wonder about farming simulations. I can't for the life of me understand the appeal of Farmville. My grandparents had a ranch when I was a kid and I can tell you firsthand that farm life is boring as hell. Why would you want to simulate something like that on the Internet?

And why stop at farming? Why not play a game where you wash little pixelated dishes all day? Extra points for scraping old lasagna off that oven pan!

8. The "Real" Gamer

I'm sort of anal retentive about what shows up on my personal Facebook feed. Should I inadvertently share a Yahoo news link without realizing it, I have a conniption fit and my whole week is ruined. I nearly died the day I realized I'd accidentally set my Playstation 3 to share trophy updates on my profile as I received them in-game. Personally I don't feel the need to share the fact that I spent Saturday night training my dark elf to Level Infinity, but that's just me.

9. The Proud Parent

I'm at that age where some of my friends are having babies, and for the most part I genuinely enjoy seeing updates about their kids. But on occasion a friend will go overboard with the baby pictures and start setting up what I imagine they think are adorable photo shoots.

I want to tell them that when they do this, Anne Geddes takes a shovel, digs a hole in her backyard, and lays down in it, just so she can roll over in her grave.

10. The Stalker

Perhaps the most unsettling of all is the Facebook stalker. They come in many forms. They might be an overzealous ex, or maybe a doting aunt who just got AOL. They like all your status updates, they comment on everything, and offer unwarranted advice on your each and every trivial action.

I can't help but imagine what it would be like if that sort of behavior took place in real life.

Sometimes I lay awake at night and imagine how nice it would feel to delete my Facebook altogether. I fantasize about how freeing it would be, and resolve to delete my account first thing in the morning. Then I wake up, decide against my prior decision, and instead sign up for Tumblr and Spotify, even though I don't understand either one. Because this is America, and I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights states that it's a man's inalienable right to complain about Facebook on a daily basis if he so chooses. In fact, if I recall correctly, the Founding Fathers declared independence because Great Britain had set up a firewall to block Facebook. That's a fact. I read that in the same magazine that said making duck lips causes face cancer.