For most of you, Facebook is a way to communicate, share pictures with your best cyber friends and enemies, make yourself seem cool, avoid your mother’s friend request and stalk the wedding photos of your Southern friends. But for those of us who avidly analyze socio-cultural trends in the modern, tethered youth, certain stylistic choices in status updates have become overused to the point where they are just one more update away from crossing the nebulous division from trope into cliché. Read the critique and recognize your own crimes — one dedicated Facebook-user/Daily Reader at a time, the following five trends can be eradicated. Happy Facebooking!
Dear Restaurant/Strangers/Something Else,
“You have let me down. Sincerely, Me.” This one comes in many forms. Dear People who took all the parking spaces, I hate you. Dear Starbucks, tell your baristas not to put so much foam in my lattes. Dear California, OMG thanks for the sun! Love you!!!!!
This might have been funny the first 50 times people did it, but it’s become tiresome. If the whole purpose of writing the letter is to share this disappointing experience with your 700 Facebook friends, then the “letter” form is misleading. Cut the frills with an avant-garde, minimalist posting: “There’s too much foam in my latte.” Or even a surrealist text-painting a la Magritte: “This latte is not a latte.” Is it fair to complain about something behind someone’s back? Yes, it is. But it is not fair to pretend that you are directly addressing the problem when you are really just whining. So try this for a change: Write that letter to Starbucks or the person who cut you in line for Fraiche and give it to them. They can’t change if you don’t tell them.
Something fun that I’m doing, but I’m going to put a question mark at the end? Yes, please.
Why are you phrasing this as a question? If you are having a great day hanging out with your best friends by the new fountain, just say that. Posting “A sunny afternoon with my besties at the new fountain? Yes, please!” is terribly indirect. Have some confidence, take a stand and end your sentence with a period like a real grown-up who actually graduated grammar school.
Hey, Location! Missed you.
Again, just say it. Just say, “It’s great to be back at Stanford!” Just because a place is a proper noun does not mean you should address it directly. We hate to be the one to break it to you, but the place you are talking to cannot hear you and will never respond to you. It’s basically on par with talking to inanimate objects. See also, number one.
That awkward moment when the moment isn’t actually awkward, but I’m pretending it is.
You know you’ve done this one. The awkward moment when you drink 2 percent milk instead of fat free. The awkward moment when you think it’s Tuesday, but it’s Friday.
Not every moment is awkward. Not every moment needs to be written in this “the moment when…” format. Like a wise, now-anonymous, freshman housemate once said, “Awkward doesn’t even exist. It’s a mindset.” So lose it, and don’t let me find it on a newsfeed.
The “I have clearly been hacked” status.
Once upon a time, posting a status as your friend was really, really hilarious. Now it is a minor crime that happens once every 5.9 seconds. It’s still not funny when someone’s status update is “I smell like cat butt,” or “I love Sarah Palin.” Well, it’s probably funny if you were there, but all your Facebook friends wish you would stop posting statuses from your friends’ accounts, if only to not disrupt our ideas of static identity uncorrupted by role-play or a fluid existence. Or whatever.
– Savannah Kopp