Whether you're on Facebook or not, if you've ever spent any time reading what people post there, you're probably familiar with the 10 things that make them look like total dicks. Here's what you should avoid posting unless you want people to think there's something seriously wrong with you.
1. "Happy Birthday, Ed! RIP"
How happy can Ed's birthday be if Ed is dead? Ed doesn't even know it's his birthday because he's in a small box six feet underground. No party, no presents, no birthday cake, and no candles for Ed this year. Dead people don't really have birthdays.
An equally aggravating variant of this douchy post is the "Happy Mother's Day to all the Mom's in heaven." Helloooooo…dead moms aren't on Facebook, either. They aren't having happy birthdays or happy mother's days. They are all fucking dead. No more shout-outs to dead people on Facebook. Please.
Same goes for your dog. He's not on Facebook, he can't read, and he has no clue what a birthday even is. Big waste of your time typing and my time reading. This reasoning also applies to wishing your dead dog a happy birthday on Facebook. STOP!
We see you, and we don't like what we see.
2. Photos of your vow renewal ceremony.
What kind of loser engages in a vow renewal ceremony, anyway? If you married each other once and didn't get divorced, you're still married to each other. But the narcissism of play-acting it out all over again is nauseating. Worse yet is inviting people to watch you pretend to marry your spouse all over again. Did they bring a pretend gift to the pretend wedding? The food better be good and the drinks flowing if the guests in the photo had to give up a perfectly good day on the links to see you express your love for your spouse, which you creepy, needy people could have done in the privacy of your own home on your own time.
3. Phrases in Latin, or quotes from the writings of Soren Kierkegaard.
There is really no need to post "bis vincit qui se vincit in victoria" because most people are not literate in Latin and even if they were, no one knows what most of these quotes even mean in English. For example, "He conquers twice who conquers himself in victory." Say what? All you're doing by posting phrases in Latin is showing off your command of a dead language. And no one likes a show-off, except at Harvard.
The same advice goes for posting quotes from the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, such as, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." Besides, if that was true, a lot of people wouldn't be wasting their money on therapy. Instead, they would be free and happy instead of mopey and self-absorbed. Either way, if you want to impress your friends, quote Kant or someone equally as obtuse, not an old Danish jingoist. Oh, and by the way, Kierkegaard would be 200 years old this year if he were still alive, so Happy Birthday Soren, RIP!
4. The weather.
It may be cold or hot or just perfect weather where you are, but unless we are where you are, we don't care what weather you're experiencing (unless it's one of those rare tsunami things and you had to run up the mountain with the elephants as all the people around you were sucked under the waves). And we have to wonder at the vacuity of the person who has nothing to say other than a statement of fact about the temperature or humidity or wind. You really don't have a giant trauma in your life that you can share (husband caught cheating with his first cousin!) or an amazing feat (chased black bear away from bird feeder in backyard!)? You could also post some unsubstantiated gossip or just make some gossip up. Just a few of the options out there. Think about it.
5. Boasts about your kids.
If your daughter is so smart that she was accepted at Stanford, you should be very proud but you should also shut the fuck up about it because some of us have daughters who are a little lazy and maybe a lot boy crazy and they don't really do much studying. So they will be donning the McDonald's costume after graduation and asking people like you if you'd like to supersize that ego of yours.
6. How you're feeling.
No one cares (except maybe your therapist). Trust us. And after you post about how sad you are that your soufflé fell flat like your aging fanny, many of us will feel pressured to say things we don't mean, like "Hope you feel better!" You didn't invite us to partake in the soufflé so we really don't care.
7. The news.
Is there an award or something for being the first person to post breaking news? Does it make you look smart to be the very first of your friends to let everyone know that so-and-so just died or was assassinated or whatever? You're basically saying to all of us that you don't think we would've learned this news if you didn't tell us because we're idiots sitting in the darkened basement of life.
Even funnier is the fact that all of the later posts about this news will appear above yours and be read before yours on Facebook, so your post will be the last one anyone reads. God, there's a sweet irony in that.
8. Food photos.
Is your life really so dull that a plate of spaghetti and some ratty-looking meatballs is an image worthy of photographing and posting on your wall? This applies to any meal you're about to eat, unless you made this meal yourself and you're very proud of how it looks. So unless it looks amazing, don't post your runny chicken pot pie on Facebook. Please. It's not the last supper…and if it is, for you, then maybe we should wish you a "Happy Birthday, RIP" sometime in the near future.
9. Vacation photos.
Guilty as charged. All of us have posted photos from vacations, but ours were funny (at someone else's expense, to be sure). But you've been drinking the Kool-Aid if you think we're buying that "happy in love" photo of you and your girlfriend in front of the Eiffel Tower. At least you stopped bickering long enough to get a photo where you're both pretending to smile in between passive-aggressive comments.
10. Bullying your alleged friends into reposting something you posted.
We don't care if you think that restaurants should have three toilet options to accommodate the "special needs" of transgendered people. But what really pisses us off is when you try to bully us into reposting your crap so that we feel that we will look politically incorrect if we don't. "Post if you love animals/Jesus/life/liberty/fried foods… and we'll see who has a strong heart." Don't tell us what to do. We don't like people telling us what to do. If we wanted someone to tell us what to do we'd get real jobs.
So to all of our alleged friends on facebook, don't post this shit unless you want the rest of us to think you're a total dick.