You're Posting Too Much On Facebook, Kid.

For the most part, as far as I know,  my Facebook friends don't have any problem with the number of  updates I share or their content,  but every once in a while I encounter someone who will criticize something about my Facebook usage.

Even when what they tell me is basically that I annoy them, the fact that they came forward and let me know is a good thing. Honesty is always good in my book.

There are also cases where it's pretty evident they have hidden (or unsubscribed from) my posts, and you don't have to be too bright to know the possible reasons they had. There could be a variety of things, but one of the most popular ones is the frequency of posts. "You post too much, it's annoying". I was actually told this today, Monday, and I'm sure this person was talking about the posts I made during the weekend. So I went to my profile to see how I had bombarded my poor friends with crap, and perhaps correct the issue. I posted 8 times on Saturday and 6 on Sunday, 14 posts in a weekend, which is probably the time with more Facebook activity in general. Hmmm. I have re-posted all of them at the end of this blog for your judgement and entertainment.

 

Fourteen posts in 48 hours don't really seem like that many posts to me, especially when all of them are, ahem, so fucking awesome. Well, OK, perhaps not all or most of them, but there were some really good ones, modesty aside. So, am I posting too much? I'm friends with people who post a lot more than me by far, yet I don't mind this, even when it's a million YouTube music videos (I call them the Facebook DJ's) or 3 trillion internet funny/inspirational pictures, which while I don't mind scrolling through, I can see why this could annoy the shit out of some people. My personal theory, is that the flaw, if it could even be called that, is theirs, not mine. I know it's kinda funny how I'm trying to justify my shit, but bear with me.

To be honest with all of you, the two of you, there was a time when prolific posters annoyed me too. I don't really know why this was the case, but I suspect at the time I was not familiar/used to this sharing idea behind social media. That, and because social media had been evolving from a more static form (MySpace), to its current state, a flow of information. Even Facebook in the beginning was much more static than what it is now. What I mean by static, is that it was mainly based around your profile, your pictures, interests, and all that sweet sweet bullshit self-description that talks about how wonderful of a person you are. The interaction happened on the side, via exchange of messages, and sometimes cock pictures, or on blogs or notes, which is how Facebook calls blogs. But all that was changed by a bird and a whale, Twitter. When Twitter arrived and became the boss in social interaction, it was clear that the future of social media was the stream of information. Social media was no longer a picture of us, but an ever developing movie in which we  are evolving and growing and others are welcome to witness and influence. It became alive. Curiously, on Twitter the only media you can upload to your profile is a little picture of yourself. Facebook did the smart thing and adopted this new approach and it became more Twitter-like. The whole idea is that you post many updates, and that's why in the little window where you type your Facebook updates it reads what's on your mind?, or what are you doing? on Twitter (what's happening? is what it currently says).

You are supposed to talk bullshit, to talk about your boring lunch, or your lame boss, or that sweet girl you met, or your badass skills, or the crap the cashier at Whole Foods gives you, that's the whole point. Current social media is not supposed to be about making a post once a day or less about some impersonal crap, or about one topic only, or just "good useful content". Social media is supposed to reflect somehow (and obviously not completely) who you are, and while your Facebook profile and yourself are not and will never be the same "thing", this is the persona you choose to display. I'm fine with one dimensional Facebook users or with ghosts (lurkers), but they are certainly the most boring ones, and the ones who choose to go against the whole concept of social media. They also tend to be older people. The kids that grew up with Facebook will never complain about how many posts their friends make.

The magic happens with engagement and interaction, and I've learned that before you are able to taste this, it's kinda hard to make sense of any of it. I remember asking myself many many times why the hell people cared to talk about their fucking lunches, do they really think anyone in the world cares one single bit about what they are eating? A picture of a Taco Bell taco? Every fucking day? Really? WTF? But I was missing the point. No one fucking cares about your tacos, or gets on Twitter to read what people are eating, but when we post that kind of information, or rather, irrelevant information, it makes us more human. I thought that the key for social media success was to make every single post useful, to make it count, but then discovered that if you do that you become a robot, a boring, automated, predictable robot. I become blind to the posts from people that do that, their lack of humanity, their coldness, makes them a different species and I can't relate to them. Needless to say, it's an inferior species in the social media sense, even if all their posts were about quantum mechanics and hard sciences, they are definitely a dumb version of (social media) humans. This is funny because to someone who doesn't have any social media experience, the opposite is what makes more sense. Lunch posts are dumb, and science posts are smart.

So, I don't think I should change my social media habits. Sometimes I'll post more, sometimes less. When I go out of town I tend to post a lot, I want everyone to travel with me through my posts, and there are times when I won't post anything at all for weeks or months. It's always changing, if one day I post 50 times, it doesn't mean the next day I'll do the same. But hey, if during one of those posting-like-a-maniac days your little fingers hurt too much because of all the scrolling you have had to do because of me, well, then I'm so sorry, please go ahead and hide me, you poor little baby. That's all I can say, or I'm sorry for taking more space on your stream than all your "serious" and "interesting" friends who have lives and barely post anything? I guess. Seriously, the most awesome people I interact online are prolific posters, they have a personality, they are interesting, and we exchange ideas, if you prefer not participating because you prefer to do that on your awesome and more tangible great real life, then don't. I still think you're just stuck to an obsolete idea that doesn't belong online, you're driving in the wrong lane, but we're all entitled to our own opinion.

Speaking of opinions, I can't really say that I never get annoyed no matter how many or what kind posts someone makes, that wouldn't be true. It's hard for me to get annoyed, but it happens, and the types of users I really can't stand are those who only post promotional crap about their companies or whatever. A personal post, a good unrelated personal post, is already great promotion. People first like who you are, and then they get interested in what you do, it's not the other way around. If all your fucking posts are about some discount, or your art (that you sell) (Patricia, this has absolutely nothing to do with you, nothing in this post is, K?), or your business, especially if all your posts come accompanied by the link of your company or Page, then you're just what we call a spammer. Seriously, perhaps no one has ever told you this, but this is the reason you don't have much success with Facebook or Twitter. Everyone hates spam, even spammers.

One last thing, recently my poor little finger started hurting a little bit after the constant posts of internet funny/inspirational pictures. Why? Well, because they may be funny and everything, but after you start posting 50 of those a day, you stop being you and start being an account that re-posts these things, and I'm supposed to be subscribed to you, not to a funny picture page. You can say the same about any post of other people's content, or links, or pictures, etc. If one day you posted several music videos, that's fine, that's cool with me, but if this was something that happens religiously every day, then no matter how funny or interesting your posts are, people will get annoyed and stop caring. That's probably why you have 1000 friends and only 2 people like your funny picture posts.

Fuck, this got long so I'll stop here. Fuck proof reading, I'm going comando. And pantless.




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Weekend Posts (you're missing the awesome threads, though):

Sat. 12:00PM - I wanna love the fuck out of you.

Sat. 12:20PM - My little chingueras taking a nap.

Sat. 12:41PM - I can hear the ceviche craving talking to me. It's seducing me, it's teasing me, and it want's me now. And I'm like, "hey, I'm pantless and dirty, just give me a few minutes bitch, I know it's a total boner killer, but I just can't go to get you like this". Or can I?

Sat. 3:31PM - Ceviche and Tres Leches. I'm doomed. Preparing for hibernation.

Sat. 3:41PM - I'm SO proud about this one. You can pre-order your Pantless C now!

Sat. 7:06PM -  Sometimes deep down inside I enjoy when I creep people out. I don't think I'm a creep (personal opinion, of course) but it's fun, for example, telling someone on the internet that barely knows you that they are your BFF, of adding paranormal elements to their pictures and then showing them your work. You may say that this could bring me problems, and I say, au contraire, this is the best way to avoid future problems. Pussies.

Sat. 8:03PM - I can't remember who of you recently had a status update that read something like "50 shades of stupid, more like it", but whoever it was, thank you, it has made me laugh many times since I read it.

Sat. 9:07PM - Suddenly, the American version seems like children's games.

 

Sunday. 9:28AM - Here's pretty good solid piece of unsolicited advice: if you have friends, don't be a dick to them. Take care of them.

Sun. 10:37AM - Article 1, Section 4 of Texas law... is pretty fucked up. It probably hasn't been changed since 1878. Scary.

Sun. 12:03PM - Whoever is doing the rain dance every fucking day: stop it, you're breaking my balls.

Sun. 4:27PM - Magick socks.

Sun. 7:01PM - So I went to Whole Foods to get these cookies, which are like little pieces of heaven that fell to the ground from the sky, and the cashier was giving me SO much shit because I mixed the "mixed" and the "chocolate" cookies. They are basically the same and have the same price, but she was acting like I just screwed up everything. What the fucking fuck? Isn't this Whole Fucking Foods? I was just caring about the ENVIRONMENT. Do you really want me to waste another plastic bag and thingy to tie the bag and put the lives of dolphins, or sea horses, or crabs, or whatever in danger??? Do you? Fuck. But in the end I couldn't even hear what she was saying, all I was thinking was cookies, cookies, cookies!

Sun. 8:09PM -  Monster seafood martini, y'all! #fitter #happier #moreproductive #comfortable #notdrinkingtoomuch http://instagr.am/p/NH11kOMA_C/

Sun. 9:45PM - Tomorrow is Monday. That means tomorrow is awesome.