0 Comments A few SLXS Facebook rules

UPDATE: Click HERE for another rule

Facebook seems to be the constant thing that I hear every single day of my life.

“Did you not get the invite?” Someone will say to me, after I have missed a party.

“No, you never called me” I say.

“I sent it to you on Facebook idiot!”

Listen, when you send me an invite at 6:15pm on a Friday night, inviting me to come out in two hours, there is a good chance I WILL NOT get that invite! I don’t have a telepathic connection to Facebook, and I cannot log in using my brain and the earth’s electromagnetic field. I can’t log my head into Facebook and check if you have left me a message. I also don’t sell myself to Facebook, by being connected to it all day.

I lead an ordinary life.

Do I know you?

Have you ever been sitting in a bar, or a restaurant, when someone walks up to you and asks “Hello there nice person! Can I be your friend?” This has never happened to me but if it did a couple things would come to my mind. This person is one of the following, or all of the following:

Freak

Serial killer

Midnight murderer

Stalker

Freak

Drug addict wanting money or drugs

Hippie

No, in fact I don’t want to be your friend you idiot! Why would I do that? Why should I be friends with you? It’s taken me all this time on earth just to meet my current friends, people who I trust. I have a select group of people who I talk to every day. They are friends. There are people who I talk to less often, and they are also my friends. These are all the people I trust. But people I don’t know, do not count as friends. So if you are the type of person that would say “Are you on drugs?” if a person randomly walked up to you asking to be your friend, then you will know the Facebook dilemma.

I cannot count how many times I have been asked to be friends with people who I don’t even know, and live in countries I have never even visited. Get a life! Personally I have checked some of these profiles out, and they have no details, no photos, but lot’s of keyboard happy people on their friends list. People who just like to add people as friends even thought they don’t know them. Who cares if you have 400 friends on your list? I don’t.

Did you ever stop to think that these people are created by companies, so that they can access your information on your profile? Once you add someone as a friend, they can gain access to your information. Information is power, and here people are giving away their personal details to people they don’t know, people who do not even exist. My profile is set to personal, so only my friends can see my information. I don’t just throw my information out there. I’m not stupid. So don’t be a fool, set your profile to only allow friends to see your information. And don’t add friends you don’t know. Also click on the privacy settings and take some time to go through the lists, and you will see that you can make your Facebook profile as private as you like. Call me neurotic if you will, but I don’t want my whole life visible to anyone who cares to know about it.

I don’t want a drink

With the multitude of applications now available, we are getting into the territory of “Get a life outside of Facebook” I don’t want to add Roshambull (Roshambullshit!), drinks, emotions, the magic eight ball, a top friends list, zombies, a fortune cookie or even a hot or not wall where you can rate my looks or any of that stuff.

I also don’t want to add a “Superpoke” wall where you can slap, kick, tickle, punch or just plain bore me. I really don’t want any of this.

If you want to send me a drink, send me a real one because that is exactly what I need after reading through all the rubbish on Facebook! Actually send me some morphine rather, drinks are not good enough. You know you have too many applications on your profile when it takes an eternity to load your profile page. Facebook is great to contact people, and it has got me in contact with people who I have not seen in years, which is what makes Facebook such a great tool. Let’s not totally abuse it!

Groups

Groups are alright, and I have a couple, but they are of things I really like, like Rick James and my High School groups and that sort of thing. But I don’t want to join every group about everything. If anything happens on the planet, someone will create a group for it. Just because you join a group called “Stop Global Warming” does not mean that it is actually going to stop. Inevitably, by using your computer so much doing arbitrary things, you are using more electricity, much of it created by burning coal. So there goes your group, up in smoke. And do you really think world leaders care that this group exists? Most world leaders are more interested in keeping the economy running rather than worrying about the earth collapsing. Sad, but true.

Don’t abuse your status

When I go look at your profile status, don’t use it to vent your emotions. People forget the power of the internet and the power of the written word. Being a writer, I know the power of words. And with great power, you need great control. My profile status is always the biggest joke on Facebook. It is just random stuff such as “Sean is not made in China” and “Sean is not dating Gisele Bundchen anymore” and other irrelevant, senseless stuff. When you have gotten drunk, had a fight with your girlfriend, and then posted on your profile status at 3am, the words “Amos is hating his girlfriends who is such a…”, this is not very mature, and it seems to be young people who do this. When I go onto my older friends profiles, they have none of this. When you use Facebook as a platform to vent your emotions about people, you need to realise it is time to maybe get in touch with the real world. If you have something to say about someone, say it directly to them.

By abusing your profile status, you can cause a lot of unnecessary hurt. Most of the time, people take out their rage on Facebook, posting these profile messages without really thinking about them.

So don’t be fools, follow the SLXS rules.

And that is it for now. Those are the SLXS rules to making Facebook an effective tool for communication in your life.

And please…don’t Facebook my mom.

Please don’t Facebook my mom. Thanks.

Sean Lloyd

Editor