If The Real World Was Like Facebook

If The Real World Was Like Facebook: A user-created photo contest created by Cracked.

Because “Facebook is full of behavior that would get you punched in the real world.”

Abbrev’s

There is a time and a place for abbreviations. Sometimes, abbrev’s are funny, other times they’re convenient. However, usually they are annoying, unnecessary and insincere. Abbreviating a post or a text when you are nowhere near the word limit is pure laziness.

Some of my biggest pet peeves are the most commonly used abbreviations…

• Thx: You really seem thankful. (Note the facetious tone in my voice.)
• Sry: I do not forgive you. I would rather you throw dirt in my face.
• Pls: The answer is no. Do not bother asking again.
• Xmas: No comment.
• Luv: Thanks for demonstrating your undying passion. I probably love you less after receiving this.

When a message is getting to its limit, the first change you should make is to eliminate unnecessary words, then switch and’s to &’s. If it is still multiple characters over, and the information is important, send two messages.

“Come on People, You Went to College”

My friend Kelly’s Gmail status: “Thank you, Facebook & TFLN for helping me see exactly how horrible 75% of the people in this country are at spelling.” She went on to say, “I am so irritated. I just want to say COME ON PEOPLE YOU WENT TO COLLEGE. Your vs. You’re is an elementary school distinction.”

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Don’t get me wrong, I am not perfect when it comes to grammar, punctuation and spelling. That said, there are many things that people could catch if they just took 15 seconds to review what they have written. People have stopped taking the time to do this.

Below I am going to list a few common mistakes, after reading this post, please don’t make them.

• Your vs. You’re
• There vs. They’re vs. Their
• To vs. Too vs. Two
• It’s vs. Its
• Neither/Nor vs. Either/Or

Status Update From the Altar

Check out this article, where a man and his wife update their Facebook ‘Relationship Status’ and Twitter Status from the altar.

“…Before these witnesses and more importantly, before Almighty God. I now pronounce you husband and wife, what God has joined together – let no one separate. (Man reaches for pocket and pulls out a mobile device.) Dana is updating his relationship status on Facebook. (Hands second device to wife.) As I was saying, I now pronounce you husband and wife. It’s official on Facebook, it’s official in my book. Dana, you may kiss your bride.” -The Minister

Facebook Birthdays

The birthday section on your Facebook ‘homepage’ should be something you check frequently. Facebook has made it far less acceptable to forget, or God forbid completely miss, a birthday. I suggest going to each of your good friends’ Facebook pages and writing their birthdays in your personal calendar at the beginning of every year.

There are some friends with whom you are (basically) only in contact via Facebook – those friends are people who you can get away with only ‘wall postings’. You should still send your good friends and family members cards, or see them in person (what a novel thought) to celebrate the occasion.

The Facebook ‘wall’, is open for business all year-round. It amuses me when a ‘Wall-to-Wall’ is only birthday wishes. One way to remedy this situation is to personally ‘thank-post’ people who ‘birthday-post’ you. It takes more than a minute to do this but it is worth it. People will be happy or happily surprised that you ‘posted’ them back, nobody will think to themselves, “crap, so and so ‘posted’ on my ‘wall’” if they took the time to ‘birthday-post’ on your ‘wall’.

I recently had a birthday, which got me thinking about this topic. I also came across this conversation.  For the record, I think it is okay to white lie if you only remembered a person’s birthday because of Facebook…at least you didn’t forget.

I would like to dedicate this post to my three Facebook friends with birthdays today: Laura, Craig and Lydia.

A Picture Says 1,000 Words

Pete Cashmore caught my attention on Mashable today with this article. The article describes the situation of “A Canadian woman [who] claims she lost her health benefits after her insurance company used her Facebook pictures as evidence that she was no longer depressed.”

I guess the key takeaways here are: 1. Facebook holds up in court, 2. Chippendales can pull a person out of depression.

Unfriend

Celtic Inc., a communications company in Brookfield Wisconsin, blogged today about the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2009 “word of the year” and it’s a social media term: Unfriend. ‘Unfriend’ is defined as a verb which means “to remove somebody as a ‘friend’ from a social networking site like Facebook.

I’m not sure what our society is coming to that the concept of ‘unfriending’ is the word of the year. Here’s my word to the wise: if there’s a chance the person you unfriend will find out that you unfriended them, you might want to just add them to your ‘limited profile’ list or remove their ‘updates’ from your ‘news feed’.

Rules People Forget

In this article some Facebook Etiquette Rules that people still forget are outlined. Please don’t forget them.

A summary of the faux pas: Pregnant cryptic private countdowns calling crazy awful colleagues instead of calling people you aren’t friends with, is application overload.

FACEbook

I came across Steve Rubel’s article ‘The Two Faces of Facebook‘ this morning and found it to be quite interesting.

Will Facebook follow in the footsteps of Google or AOL? My bet is Google.

Awkward Turtle

I am the biggest fan of ’status updates’. I love Facebook and I love Twitter. However, TMI is TMI. There are ‘comments’ that scream “elephant in the room” and ’status updates’ that whisper “awkward turtle”. Let’s try to keep those to a minimum.

“Facebook etiquette rule #853,653: Do not write the details of your miscarriage in your Facebook status.” -VanidYam, aka: Amy Davin.

Your ‘friends’ thank you in advance for following this rule.