Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Sorry you broke up, but Facebook is NOT your personal journal

Breaking up is hard to do, Neil Sedaka and I both agree with you. It sucks hairy, filthy rhino balls. Depressing and painful, it's a rite of passage and it happens to the best of us. However, unless you wish to leave yourself wide open to public ridicule and judgement, do NOT post the gory details all over your favorite social media site. Going back to keeping your personal life private and avoiding the over share, this qualifies on both levels. This information is for you and your ex, and perhaps a couple of close friends and family members.  What it is not meant for is the prying eyes of your 567 FB "friends" and 2K Twitter followers. You are becoming comment and stati fodder, and frankly, blog topics for me. Never one to sugar coat the truth, I will fully own up to laughing out loud, coffee spewing across my poor laptop, as I read the gruesome story of your breakup and all the ensuing drama you feel comfortable enough to post for God and all to see.

So in the interest of being helpful, I've compiled a list of things I've noticed you clueless, dim bulbs doing, and I'd like to share them with you.  First, and this is a fairly big one, remember that Facebook is NOT your diary. I know your heart is breaking and life feels like a country song, but posting page-long diatribes about you and your ex are totally inappropriate material for a social media site. That is way too much information being lobbed at a bunch of mostly strangers peppered with a handful of people you know, several of whom should not read about your private life because you work with them. Cry into your pillow, write letters you'll never mail, scream bloody murder while you are driving, and do whatever it takes to stop the stupidity from oozing out of your fingers and on to my computer screen.  You have friends, don't you?  This is the time to fill their ears to bursting with the gory details of the break up so you can hash and rehash each word that was said, evaluate the gestures and facial expressions that occurred, and maybe even trash the fuck out of your ex.
Denial, you're so deep in it I am surprised you can breathe. Once you are officially and permanently broken up, your profile picture should reflect that fact.  Nothing makes you look more fucktarded than having your profile pic emblazoned on all your stati and on your home page bearing you and your ex looking like lovesick baboons. You've made the break-up announcement, a little follow-through is necessary now. Put up a photo of a beer bottle or your ass for all I care, but delete the one of you and Mr. Wonderful. The same applies for the 17 photo albums you have in your account and the giant cover photo of the two of you at your cousin's wedding looking like you were going to be next in line. Constant reminders are not healthy and serve no other purpose than to make you cry. Plus, leaving them there makes you look pitiful and desperate.  He's not coming back, leaving the photos there is not the equivalent of leaving crumbs in the forest to ensure a safe return.  It's not going to bring him running into your arms, if anything, he will be creeped out if he hasn't already unfriended and blocked you.
The vague status post, another incredibly annoying break-up move. The allusion to sadness without actually saying it, this is no time to be coy.  If you don't want anyone to ask you why you are down in the dumps, don't leave clues for us on the internet.  We all fancy ourselves part-time detectives, and love putting pieces together to come to a conclusion about you and everyone like you. We will ask you what's wrong.  This is usually met with some equally ambiguous comment like, "oh, nothing, just a bad week, that's all."  Christ on the cross, if you don't want feedback, don't put it out there! The alternative reasoning is when you intentionally start off vague to reel us in and force us to beg for answers.  This is where you lose me.  I will ask, but I will not beg you. I don't care that much.  If you are a close friend of mine, I already know what's going on and I won't need to question you publicly.  My close friends aren't dipwads and wouldn't post such fucking nonsense.
Leave friends out of this mishegoss! This means staying off of his friends' posts for a fairly decent period of time. When you suddenly become Miss Mary Commenter on all of their posts, it becomes painfully obvious you are attempting to get into their good graces, whether you want them to side with you or put in a good word for you.  Either alternative is stupid as hell, don't do it. Don't try to force mutual friends to choose between the two of you.  This is not their battle, nor their break up.  Don't foist unnecessary stress on these people. It's not the way to ingratiate yourself and you will lose more than you stand to gain. Keep the drama between the two of you, and leave friends out of it. They don't deserve to be thrust in the middle of your shit.

Betraying their trust, even if they cheated and left you for some cheap-ass, skank-ho, is unacceptable! I don't care what crime they supposedly committed, what heinous acts of shitheelness they've done, you may not use Facebook to let us all know about his teeny weenie or inability to use it for good. This is information we simply have no need for, so please leave it in your memory bank for a hearty, private chuckle at his expense. This applies to anything he told you in confidence over the course of your relationship. We have no need to know that he wet the bed until he was 15, or that his mommy laid out his clothes for him until he moved out.  He shared this with you because he trusted you and believed that you would keep his confidence.  Don't stoop to his level of evil and spill your guts all over the place. At the very least, prove to yourself that you are the better person.
Posting photos of you with 17 different guys, drink in hand, each and every weekend night since the break up is classless at best. You look desperate and I have some shocking news for you, Einstein, it doesn't make him in the slightest bit jealous.  He doesn't give a steaming shit what you are doing or who you are doing, either.  He moved on, so should you. These photos make you look like a pathetic slut, much like the whore for whom he left your ass.  If that doesn't prevent you from continuing to post these humiliating photos, maybe this will.  Any chance you had of him coming back has just been totally eradicated by your immense public stupidity.  You've embarrassed yourself and he sure as shit is not impressed. Now he is patting himself on the back for his good judgement.  Smooth move.
Sad songs they say so much, I completely agree with Elton John. However, they are for your personal listening discomfort. Use them to induce a Niagara Falls of hot, salty tears in the privacy of your own home or car. Crying is a good outlet for pain, and nobody will deny that or begrudge you your need to do so. When you start sharing every gut-wrenching song you are listening to on You Tube and Pandora, listen for the loud groans and sighs.  We are all shaking our heads with disgust for your clear lack of discretion and boundaries. There is never a reason to drag the rest of us down into your personal hell with you.  Some of the songs you post may actually strike a nerve with someone else, about something completely unrelated to your break up.  Maybe it reminds them of a loved one who passed away.  Do you really want to reopen that wound for someone else?  Selfish shithead.
Finally, I am going to give you the best advice you'll get on the subject. Facebook is not a forum to beg for his return.  DO NOT humiliate yourself this way.  He shouldn't be looking at your wall, and you should keep your ass off of his. Stalking his wall, looking for an in or a sign that your presence may be welcome again is self-destructive and pointless. Using his wall to ask him to love you again, is worse than that. If you truly want to try again, if you feel the need to talk it over one more time, call him on the goddamn telephone and schedule a meeting.  No real discussions happen on FB, I've told you that, and it is particularly true of this situation. All it will do is embarrass him to the point of cutting off all contact and erasing any hope of a reunion for you. Putting someone on the spot like that almost always causes them to hunt for an escape and maybe even lash out at you even if that wasn't their initial intent.  Setting yourself up for failure online is a foolish move, don't be THAT person.
This all goes back to the advice I gave you in an earlier post.  Keep your personal shit off of the fucking internet.  You leave me and anyone remotely like me no choice but to mock you and your pathetic life. Ranting on and on in your stati about your ex, your lost love, and crying in your beer for all of us to witness is asking for public ridicule, and I for one, am not above it. You will become a blog topic, and I will rip your dumb ass to shreds, publicly, just the way you seem to like it.  The internet is not your diary, it isn't group therapy, and we are not your fucking MFTs.  Don't expect pity, you'll be grossly disappointed.  If you don't know me by now, learn quickly or risk the consequences!  Are you friggin kidding me right now???

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