Facebook is an online community and in being such has developed certain (often unwritten) rules that its users follow. While some rules are easy to understand and abide by, certain Facey situations leave me unsure of what Face-behavior protocol is called for in response to my scrolling.
Posting photos is a FB mainstay. But what do you do when a person posts a photo that is clearly sideways or, worse yet, upside-down? The inverted problem is multiplied 1080 if the post is a video. The person posting must be aware their image is not aligned with the rest of the world - unless they are standing on their head, which I suppose is a possibility.
If a sideways-posted photo looks particularly interesting, I pull it to my desktop and rotate it myself so it is in its full upright (normal) position. But, even if I like the photo, I don't hit the like button because that would be like promoting bad behavior.
Here's the thing: Rotating a photo on Facebook is not only feasible, it's as easy as pressing, well, the rotate button. It's as simple as that. Sigh.
Next in popularity to photo postings are birthday greetings. Each day Facebook tells us who among our friends is experiencing a 24-hour b-day celebration. As a FB friend or acquaintance it is our duty to come up with a unique and heartfelt birthday wish for each of our 537 friends. Some days this means coming up with more than one unique and heartfelt message because no two birthday greetings should ever be the same.
When I'm having a non-creative unbirthday-wishing sort of day, I beat myself up for the blase and boring greeting of, "Happy birthday, insert name here." Surely the person notes my lack of sincerity and enthusiasm. On those days, I am a birthday greeting failure and do a headstand and look at myself upside-down in the mirror with shame.
Another birthday conundrum occurs when it is your big day. You receive dozens or perhaps hundreds of birthday hellos, wishes, hallelujahs and other assorted salutations. What to do? Do you thank each greeter personally by responding to their message with a message of your own? If you choose this route, you are saddled to your Facey account for a hefty portion of the day, and that doesn't feel like a happy birthday in my world. Instead do you simply like each of the greetings individually, or do you take it one step further and wait until the day after your day and send one generic thank you message to the entire group of greeters? I don't know the correct answer. I'm just posing the question because it's weighed heavy on my mind for some time. Sharing the agony lessens it, somehow.
Finally (you knew it was coming) let's talk politics. Everyone else is. It's okay to have opinions and it's even okay to post about them because I can scroll through rather quickly, or block repeat offenders if I choose.
Trouble (for me) is that not every posting is factual. There are numerous "news" websites that post satire. Satire is not the truth. It uses exaggeration, irony and sarcasm to create humor. There wouldn't be a problem with this, if people understood that not everything on the Internet is true (it's not?) nor is it meant to be. But, many good and trusting FB souls don't know that - or choose to look past that - and post and repost and like and comment on satire as though it were the truth. And I cringe a little bit again and wonder why I'm even scrolling - again.
And then I am embarrassed - again. But this time for myself and the things I choose to do and the time I waste scrolling and wondering if the plural of faux pas shouldn't be faux pases. But it isn't. Trust me. I looked it up on the Internet.
- Jill Pertler's column appears Thursdays in the Times. She can be reached at pertmn@qwest.net.
Posting photos is a FB mainstay. But what do you do when a person posts a photo that is clearly sideways or, worse yet, upside-down? The inverted problem is multiplied 1080 if the post is a video. The person posting must be aware their image is not aligned with the rest of the world - unless they are standing on their head, which I suppose is a possibility.
If a sideways-posted photo looks particularly interesting, I pull it to my desktop and rotate it myself so it is in its full upright (normal) position. But, even if I like the photo, I don't hit the like button because that would be like promoting bad behavior.
Here's the thing: Rotating a photo on Facebook is not only feasible, it's as easy as pressing, well, the rotate button. It's as simple as that. Sigh.
Next in popularity to photo postings are birthday greetings. Each day Facebook tells us who among our friends is experiencing a 24-hour b-day celebration. As a FB friend or acquaintance it is our duty to come up with a unique and heartfelt birthday wish for each of our 537 friends. Some days this means coming up with more than one unique and heartfelt message because no two birthday greetings should ever be the same.
When I'm having a non-creative unbirthday-wishing sort of day, I beat myself up for the blase and boring greeting of, "Happy birthday, insert name here." Surely the person notes my lack of sincerity and enthusiasm. On those days, I am a birthday greeting failure and do a headstand and look at myself upside-down in the mirror with shame.
Another birthday conundrum occurs when it is your big day. You receive dozens or perhaps hundreds of birthday hellos, wishes, hallelujahs and other assorted salutations. What to do? Do you thank each greeter personally by responding to their message with a message of your own? If you choose this route, you are saddled to your Facey account for a hefty portion of the day, and that doesn't feel like a happy birthday in my world. Instead do you simply like each of the greetings individually, or do you take it one step further and wait until the day after your day and send one generic thank you message to the entire group of greeters? I don't know the correct answer. I'm just posing the question because it's weighed heavy on my mind for some time. Sharing the agony lessens it, somehow.
Finally (you knew it was coming) let's talk politics. Everyone else is. It's okay to have opinions and it's even okay to post about them because I can scroll through rather quickly, or block repeat offenders if I choose.
Trouble (for me) is that not every posting is factual. There are numerous "news" websites that post satire. Satire is not the truth. It uses exaggeration, irony and sarcasm to create humor. There wouldn't be a problem with this, if people understood that not everything on the Internet is true (it's not?) nor is it meant to be. But, many good and trusting FB souls don't know that - or choose to look past that - and post and repost and like and comment on satire as though it were the truth. And I cringe a little bit again and wonder why I'm even scrolling - again.
And then I am embarrassed - again. But this time for myself and the things I choose to do and the time I waste scrolling and wondering if the plural of faux pas shouldn't be faux pases. But it isn't. Trust me. I looked it up on the Internet.
- Jill Pertler's column appears Thursdays in the Times. She can be reached at pertmn@qwest.net.
