Nah’msayin?

Keep Facebook Gossip Inside Facebook

OpinionsAshley Opheim — Published October 26, 2010

First of all, your cell phone is not a phone booth—I can hear every single thing you’re blabbering to someone who, if is truly your friend, doesn’t really care.

Second, you sound dumb. Your Facebook wall is something I really, really don’t care about. I don’t care what nonsense someone posted on that photo of you table dancing at Tokyo last weekend or how that stupid bitch who stole your boyfriend months ago has now sent you a friend request that you are maliciously ignoring.

Now, I know it’s a social network and everything, but can’t you keep it on, well, the network? Send your friend a Facebook message if you absolutely need to get this off your chest.

You are confusing old people on the bus with all your talk of “walls” and “poking.” They are bowing their heads and awkwardly twiddling their thumbs. They are scared to make eye contact with you because you are an alien to them. The people on the bus look sad; they exchange eye rolls and glum looks as you go on with your oblivious banter.

When you are in the real world, as in, on the bus, keep your conversation real. I don’t care about what you do when you get home and put on your sweat pants and crawl into your bed with your computer and your social networking, but when you talk about Facebook in public, you sound narcissistic.

Sure, in Facebook-land you are the centre of your social network and everything revolves around you one way or another. But in the real world, as in, on a crowded bus or anywhere, for that matter, to have you blabber about shallow non-events that happened on Facebook is like hearing that a kitten has been strangled to death.

—Ashley Opheim,
Fringe Arts Editor

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 11, published October 26, 2010.