The Five Worst Types of Facebook Users
I was originally hesitant to write this article, reasoning in my previous one (“The Five Best Type of Users on Facebook“) that articles on annoying Facebook users are ubiquitous on the internet. However, I’ve changed my mind after an overwhelming tidal wave of demand (see: one person requested it), and being a man of the people, how could I not give in? Facebook Devils beware!
#5 Attention Seekers
Social media is great because it gives people a voice that they usually wouldn’t have, and while this may lead to a lot of people giving their two cents on subjects that they know next to nothing about, we can still all generally agree that the more free a society is to express themselves, the better. Unfortunately, this freedom of expression is also used by the bored and immature to try and get attention for themselves in the cheapest possible ways.
By far the pettiest example of this is when people write a status along the lines of “I’m ugly, like this status if you think I’m not”. That particular line, which I’ve seen dozens of times on sites like failblog, we can assume is almost entirely used by teenagers is mostly done on the younger side of sixteen who don’t really know any better. However, there are some people who haven’t this excuse and make similarly embarrassing posts. Maybe they think the world owes them some kind of routine confidence booster for those down days, and because of this group of people, it’s my firm believe that some kind of real life punishment should exist for improper Facebook behaviour, and for this particular crime there shall be no mercy. Until that happens though, at least we have Facebook fail to enjoy!
Max knows.
Another shameless form of attention seeking is when people post an overly dramatic update, but refuses to tell anyone what they’re actually talking about. It’s not very rare to find something along the lines of:
Attention Seeker: Worst day ever! I can’t believe this happened!
Concerned Friend: Aww, what happened?
Attention Seeker: I just don’t want to talk about it right now…
It all just begs the very exasperating question: “…why?”
Note the exasperation!
#4 People who write totally passive status updates
A common complaint towards Facebook and Twitter is that people always write updates about whatever unremarkable activity they happen to be doing, but there’s an important distinction to make here. Looking through your news feed you’ll frequently see updates like “woo! Going to see ‘popular new film title X’, should be great!”, “excited for our night at ‘trendy bar Y” or “finally home after a long day of ‘exhausting activity Z”. This is mostly forgivable (there is definitely a quota as to how much of these I can take before I lose any interest in everyone forever) because there’s some emotion there, or at least some actual information (albeit mostly inconsequential information), so someone can be happy for you or they can say ‘oh, I heard activity X/Y/Z movie/bar/ wasn’t so great’.
What is far less forgivable though, and the reason why so many people complain that Facebook is a tremendous waste of time, is when people write updates devoid of any emotion, information or really, any discernible point. I cannot count the amount of times I’ve seen something like “Going to the movies” or “getting lunch” on my news feed. I probably could count the times, but would likely pass out with rage after the third or fourth one.
This is actually very interesting to me, because I often wonder, with genuine fascination; what do these people hope to achieve with this status? There are a few questions I always want to ask, but I don’t because I’m not confident in their ability to adequately answer. Firstly, what do you expect people to say in response to that? Imagine if someone texted you something like that, or otherwise communicated it in a manner that forced you to respond. The only response I can think of is “…okay”, or at best a very sarcastic “Sounds interesting!”
At least this guy is interested…right?!
#3 People who can’t spell
This type of person comes in a few different variations. Less noticeable are people who don’t really speak all that well in real life and who don’t really concern themselves with any intellectual matters anyway, so it’s not as irritating because you don’t expect much anyway, right?
The exception to this rule is people who, for reasons that no sane person could possibly fathom, arbitrarily capitalize some letters and supplant others for numbers; “iN Oth3R w0rdZ pPlz wh0 tAlK LiK d1z!” You’d think this would be done exclusively by thirteen and fourteen year olds’ just discovering the internet, but sadly it’s a little more prevalent than that. Everyone I know usually has at least one or two friends on their feed who talk like that, which may not seem like it’s so bad, but really, one or two people on the planet who type like that is one or two people too many.
Even more frustrating still are people who know better. It actually frightens me when people who are in university, or even worse, actually have freaking university degrees, and still consistently make simple grammatical errors. For the record, it’s understandable if you write something with small grammatical or spelling inaccuracies every now and then, because mistakes are made, especially since people often Facebook while doing something else, like while at work or manning expensive and dangerous machinery or whatever.
What is most infuriating is the fact that they just don’t care, they constantly make the same mistakes and, if it’s pointed out, will often call the other person a grammar-Nazi. Well, I’d definitely rather be a grammar Nazi then not knowing the difference between there and their.
The flipside to this is if you happen to be someone who constantly makes grammatical and spelling errors. In which case, man, aren’t those grammar-Nazi’s annoying?!
#2 People who send endless pointless invitations
There are two different types of pointless invitations that we all get constantly on Facebook; invitations to Facebook games and random club events that we have nothing to do with. The reason why the people who send said invites are on this list is because usually the only thing they seem to do at all is to send these invites that hog precious Facebook screen – Facebook screen that could be telling me where to find the cheapest shoes or meet sexy singles in my area or whatever they’re advertising these days. Were it not for this dubious honour, you probably wouldn’t even notice these users, since usually their only function on Facebook seems to be sending invites.
But they do send invites. So you do notice them. And they keep sending them, over and over. And every time you defriend one, much like a wack-a-mole machine sent from hell, another pops up to take their place. Honestly, how many times is it reasonable for me to reject a Farmville request before I kick my computer screen, and what the hell is Swaylo and why do people I’ve not talked to in years want me to join it?
And for all you DJ’s and promoters out there, learn a lesson from good guy Greg:
#1 People who post way, way too many status updates
This one is sort of encompassed in #5 and #4, but it deserves its own place on the list because it often indicates that the poster in question is a little bit crazy. And not the harmless or endearing types of crazy. The crazy type of crazy.
I say that because often they will go through a ridiculous range of emotions that not even Shakespeare could stuff into a play, all in the space of a few hours. If you go onto their Facebook page you’ll see something along the lines of:
10:30am – “Today is going to suck =[”
1pm – “Never been this happy in my life!”
3pm– “You had to go and ruin my happiness didn’t you? THIS SUCKS!”
7pm -“Still SO angry”
And so on. So on to infinity.
You’ll notice that typically the more statuses they post, the less people tend to like or comment them, which should give the poster a hint that people aren’t interested in the soap opera that they perceive their life to be.
This type of poster is dangerous enough as it is, but often they have characteristics of the above categories as well. A user who posts 4+ statuses a day, many of which are blatantly done for attention or otherwise contain no subject of interest, or often are devoid of any information at all? Utter chaos.
