Opinion

Another day, another Farmville request to deny

Like most of you, I spend an unhealthy amount of time on Facebook.

It’s the king of social media.

Facebook has helped me to stay in touch with old friends, keep track of birthdays and has even helped me track down family members that I had never met.

But I think we all know that there are some Facebook faux pas.

With the site becoming such a big part of our popular culture, it’s no surprise that when people list their pet peeves there’s usually at least one connected to Facebook.

One of the most obvious is game requests. Here’s a tip for you: if you’ve been sending Farmville requests to the same person for over a month and they haven’t responded, then they don’t want to play Farmville. While you’re at it, go ahead and assume that they don’t care about Mafia Wars or any of the other games.

Another big pet peeve is the friend who uses his or her status updates as permanent soapboxes to preach and lecture from.

I know that coming from the editorial content editor that this is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, but you aren’t receiving email or text updates every time one of my articles is published. If you want to read my opinion then you can. If you don’t, then no one is throwing a newspaper in your face.

But if you’re the person making hourly status updates on why liberals, republicans, Christians, atheists, etc. are smart and everyone else is stupid or corrupt, then all you’re doing is making your friends consider hiding your updates.

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and generally your friends are interested in what you believe in. It’s fine if you feel strongly about a subject and mention it on Facebook.

But no one wants to be reminded of where you stand via politically charged memes every hour of every day.

Another annoying problem on Facebook is friendship requests. Some people want as many friends as possible. Others want to limit the people they friend for one reason or another.

If you friend request someone that you met once at a party and they decline, don’t send them a whiny message asking for an explanation. Don’t keep trying to friend request them over and over. Just let it go and move on.

Facebook is not your diary and your Facebook friends are not your group therapy. There’s a limit to how much people will be sympathetic to sad status updates.

There should be a rule stating that you only get to make an update about your rocky love life once every few weeks. Go ahead and trash your cheating boyfriend and bask in the warm glow of your friends commenting and offering to beat him up for you.

But after that, you need to log off and go to a bar with a few close friends if you want to keep talking about it. Your old high school classmates don’t care if you still tear up every time you here Adele on the radio.

Last but not least, I’d like to address those of you that are still participating in Facebook poking. Stop it right now.

Throwing sheep was a little funny when it was popular, but it had the decency to disappear once it got annoying.

For the most part, everyone has stopped Facebook poking. But there are still a few people that insist on keeping the tradition alive. They’re almost always exes or people you haven’t seen since middle school.

Virtual poking was creepy when it was popular and it’s only gotten stranger with time. Just let it die.

All in all, people try to be considerate on Facebook. Offenders of these faux pas may not even realize that others are getting annoyed. For the sake of our collective sanity, let’s all try to be a little more aware of how we’re using our favorite social media site.