Things We Posted About on Social Media at Other Grim Points in History

Tags

churchill, civil war, Facebook, history, lincoln, napoleon, social media

As we count down the days to a hopeful 2021, it’s tempting to go on Facebook and label 2020 as the Worst. Year. Ever.

But anyone who suffered through the Bubonic Plague of 698, the Battle of the Somme in 1916, or any of the other countless human calamities throughout history might argue otherwise.

As a way of putting 2020 into perspective, here’s a sampling of what people were posting about on social media during other low points in our history:

“To all surviving passengers of the Hindenburg — we sincerely apologize for last night’s incident. Because customer satisfaction is important to us, please allow us to make things right by offering a voucher on a future flight, at the date of your choice to any destination that our airships currently serve!”

–Capt. Max Pruss, May 7, 1937

 “Having a day…”

–U.S. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, Battle of Fredericksburg Dec. 13, 1862

“Hey Facebook peeps! Does removal of ICBMs from Turkey in exchange for removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba sound like a fair trade? Asking for a friend.”

–President John F. Kennedy, Oct. 27, 1962

“My friends think I’m so chill and calm when shit goes down, but some days I could just EXPLODE!”

–Mahatma Gandhi, April 6, 1919

“Fellow Judeans! If you’ve got a son age 2 or younger and you live in the Greater Bethlehem area, we would really love to hear from you! Just click on the link below to complete our two-minute survey. Thx!” 

–King Herod, July 23, 2 AD

“Ever have one of those mornings when you want to crawl back under the covers of your cot and just go back to sleep?”

–Napoleon Bonaparte, Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815

“Jeez! Trying to hold a decent cabinet meeting, but this little redhead brat keeps interrupting and singing about ‘tomorrow.’”

–President Franklin Roosevelt, Feb. 20, 1933

“I know I offered ‘blood, sweat, toil and tears’ in yesterday’s speech, but what I could go for right now is a nice, soothing glass of Johnnie Walker.”

–Winston Churchill, May 11, 1940

“Winter in Eastern Pennsylvania can kiss my big, white ass.”

–Gen. George Washington, Jan. 15, 1778

“SO over 1864. Here’s hoping for better things next year.”

–President Abraham Lincoln

Love Songs for Social Media

Tags

Facebook, google+, instagram, linkedin, social media, twitter

“Zuckerberg Knows” (to the tune of “God Only Knows”)

I may not always friend you,
but I got some baby pics to send you.
And did you hear what Trump said?
Just check out my latest post thread.
Zuckerberg knows how I feel about you.

If you should dare unfriend me.
Who knows how that would upend me?
So just click on a smile emoji,
for my post about Ben Kenobi.
Zuckerberg knows how I feel about you.

“Just the Google+” (to the tune of “Just the Two of Us”)

I get the feeling no one’s here
and what makes that cool, my dear,
is I got this place to myself.
A social network of my own
and the seven friends I’ve known.
They don’t hang here anymore.

Just the Google+
That’s where I like to jam.
Just the Google+
(Just the Google+)
Just the Google+
You can keep your Instagram!
Just the Google+
It’s who I am.

“I Had to Add You” (to the tune of “It Had to be You”)

I had to add you.
I had to add you.
I networked around and finally found
that connection who
could help me get paid
and then maybe get laid
and even be sad
just to be glad
LinkedIn was made.

Some folks on LinkedIn
connect just for grins.
They don’t really aim
for fortune or fame.
What world are they in?

For nobody else could get me a job.
Without your clout, I’d be a slob.
I had to add you,
wonderful you.
I had to add you.

“The Tweet of My Life” (to the tune of “The Time of My Life”)

Now, I’ve had the tweet of my life,
and I’ve never wrote this way before.
Yes, I swear
it’s the truth
and I owe it all to booze.

I just had a Jack & Coke
and about a dozen whiskey shots.
And now that I’m online,
well, you know I’ve gotta share my thoughts.

Yeah, there’s trouble all around,
You know, North Korea and all that stuff.
And my ex is on the prowl,
thinking that she’ll call my bluff!

Just remember–
Tweetin’s the one thing
I can’t get enough of.
So in 280 or less characters,
I’ll spread the love.

Because, I had the tweet of my life…

If Life Were Like Facebook

Tags

Facebook, lee greenwood, president, social media, trump, twitter

My wife woke me Friday morning with her usual greeting.

“You won’t believe what he did now,” she muttered.

Not bothering to answer, I lifted my phone from the bedside table, scrolled through my newsfeed, and found the article that was the source of this morning’s agitation: “Trump Moves Press Corps to White House Basement.”

I re-posted the article on my feed with a one-word introduction: “Ugh.” Then I hit the shower.

The drive to work was predictably slow, as traffic threaded past several rear-end accidents that were likely due to people posting updates and checking their “likes.” Self-driving cars can’t get here soon enough, I thought.

“Trump’s an idiot,” my coworker, Josh, declared as I settled into my office cubicle. “He is a horrible, horrible human being.”

“Yeah, I heard about the press corps,” I replied.

“No,” said Josh, dabbing his nose with a well-worn Kleenex. “I’m talking about the executive order declaring ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’ as the new national anthem.”

“Ridiculous,” agreed Kathryn, popping her head above the cubical wall, wide-eyed as a frightened prairie dog. “This has got to stop. Who voted for this guy?”

“I voted for him,” Adam said, swiveling his chair toward us. “And it’s time for a new anthem. Lee Greenwood has done a hell of a lot more for this country than Francis Scott Key ever did.”

“Great news!” Jenny said as she breezed past our row. “My daughter just got accepted to Stanford!”

“Good for her,” Josh said with a snort. “A college degree will mean a lot when we’re all working the salt mines for the Chinese.”

We went to lunch a little earlier than usual, it being a Friday and all. After posting pics of our entrees on our respective newsfeeds, we returned to lamenting Trump’s latest tweet about election fraud.

“I know, right?” the waitress chirped as she handed us a fresh basket of microwaved cheese bread. “He’s such a psychopath. Shaking my head!”

The afternoon dragged on at work, as it usually does, but I was proud of the 240-word post I wrote about freedom of the press and the looming national tragedy. By the time I left the office, it had garnered 24 “likes,” and seven “loves.”

Glancing down at my phone as I merged onto the highway, I never saw the Peterbilt truck that sideswiped my Prius, sending it rolling over a ditch and into the trees that lined the road.

I woke up hours—maybe days—later, in a hospital room bathed in sunlight.

“You hear what Trump did today?” a nurse asked as she checked my chart.

“I know,” my wife muttered, peering at her phone. “What did we ever do to deserve this crap?”

Stephen Roth is the author of the comic novel A Plot for Pridemore, which won the 2012 Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction.

The Social Media Activist

Tags

activism, election, Facebook, politics, social media, twitter

He’s the first one to post
when things couldn’t be worse.
A riot, the government,
the Billy Goat Curse.

He trolls through the Web
With justice in mind.
Writing words that are true,
But not terribly kind.

When he’s really annoyed,
he might go on a screed
about late-term abortions
or the music of Creed.

He’s the friend whom you never
would dare to unfriend.
For you know that he’d notice,
and then angrily send
you a message that asks
why you’d ever take issue
at his meme about guns.
Should he fetch you a tissue?

He’s the social media activist.

And then there are moments
that touch everyone’s heart,
A shooting, a court case,
Someone’s life ripped apart.

At that very moment,
He will rush to his Dell
And alter his profile pic
to show he means well.

It’s the least he can do
as a person who cares
about big events
that score “likes” and “shares.”

He’s the social media activist.

And every four years
when they have an election,
he’ll post all day long
about his selection.

He’ll share lots of click-bait,
some of it true,
about his opponents
And bad things that they do.

Crowding out all the posts
about babies and kittens,
and marriage announcements,
and warm, woolen mittens.

It’s kind of turned into his calling,
you see.
When he’s not stuck at work
or home watching TV.

He’s there to remind us
of terrible stuff
that will or may happen,
of how life can be tough.

And I think he’s succeeded
to an alarming extent
at making Facebook and Twitter
great places to vent.

He’s the social media activist.

Facebook and the First Day of School

Tags

childhood, Facebook, first day of school, parenting, school, social media

Facebook Posts About Little Girls on The First Day of School:

• “Ready for another exciting year at Taft Elementary! Our little Kimberly missed all of her friends!”
• “Gracie loves her Paw Patrol backpack! So psyched about kindergarten!”
• “Third grade, here we come! Kelsey is growing up so fast!”
• “No fears about second grade. Sophia couldn’t wait to get on the bus!”
• “Math is fun! Here’s a video of Olivia explaining the Pythagorean theorem. Look out, first grade!”

Facebook Posts About Little Boys on the First Day of School:

• “First day of kindergarten for Tyler. Wish us luck.”
• “This is the best photo we could get for Jacob’s first day of second grade. We practically had to drag him out of bed.”
• “If nose-picking is a 1st grade subject, Declan will sail through with flying colors—all of them gross.”
• “That blur you see is our son as we attempted a back-to-school pic. Prayers for his teacher and classmates.”
• “And, so it begins…”

The Mind-Altering Effects of Facebook

Tags

Facebook, linkedin, mark zuckerberg, social media

If you’ve read the news lately, you know that Facebook has been accused of manipulating the content it puts in front of 1.6 billion users, instead of providing them with a healthy, balanced diet of objective, well-researched information.

Facebook, some people argue, is cynically skewing the way we see the world, as if the social network bears the responsibility of some sort of public service instead just being a free, digital place where you can write “happy birthday!” and share photos of your adorable children and pets.

The company I work for sometimes buys Facebook ads that appear on the newsfeeds of people we think might want to use our services. One of these people sent us an angry message recently, telling us to “stop spreading spam!!!

“I didn’t like you,” he wrote. “Get off my page!”

Lucifer in the flesh? No, wait–that’s Ted Cruz.

It’s not really your page, I wanted to tell him. You don’t own it or pay for it. The page, and everything on it, belongs to Facebook. But instead of getting into an argument about privacy rights with an upset truck driver from Thief River Falls, Minnesota, I gently instructed him on how to disable our ad with just a couple of clicks in his account settings.

Regardless of what Facebook’s role is or isn’t, any organization with 1.6 billion members has enormous influence. In an effort to test this power, I spent a full week using Facebook as my only source of news and information, just to see what it would do to me.

Here are the 11 most important things I learned from my week on Facebook:

• That no one posts about the presidential election anymore, either because they’re sick of hearing about it or too depressed to comment on it.
• That Winston Churchill was famous for uttering the phrase, “You’ve got to fight for the right to party.”
• That a pooped puppy and a tired police officer fall asleep at an animal shelter, and you won’t believe what happens next!
• That my friend’s wife likes to paint her toenails aqua before going on a trip to Cozumel.
• That when you scroll across a link promising photos of serial killers when they were children, you cannot help but to open it.
• That because you once listed To Kill a Mockingbird as a favorite book, Facebook thought you might be like to buy a To Kill a Mockingbird T-shirt or perhaps an Atticus Finch beer koozie.
• That a photo that captures someone in the crowd holding up a smartphone at a Mike Tyson fight proves, finally, that time travel exists.
• That you feel kind of dumb for commenting—again—on a post that a friend re-posted from three years ago.
• That you really want to tell Hillary Clinton, “Get off my page! I didn’t like you!”
• That when you scroll across a link promising embarrassing pet photos, you have no choice but to open it.
• That most people want to just post pictures of their kid graduating high school or a good-looking sunset, or they want to wish someone happy birthday—which is what Facebook was designed for in the first place.

I’ve Moved on. My Facebook Account Hasn’t.

Tags

author, Facebook, facebook sucks, fiction, hallmark, linkedin, social media, Stephen Roth, technology

One of the curious things I have noticed from my six years of participating in social media is that your online persona is not very good at adjusting to change. You might move to a new city, marry a new spouse or find a new job, but social media refuses to let go. Unless you take some drastic, cold-blooded measures, your accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. will operate under the assumption that the 2015 version of you isn’t a whole lot different from the 2009 you.

But how many of us have not gone through a significant change in our lives over the past six or seven years?

I’ll give you a personal example. From 2006 to 2013, I worked for the same great, big corporation in Kansas City. When I reluctantly joined Facebook in 2009, I began “friending” a lot of my coworkers, because it seemed a good way to keep up with colleagues I didn’t see or talk with every day. It also seemed like a savvy way to network within a large organization. A lot of people I worked with were aggressive in connecting with their coworkers on Facebook, perhaps for the same reason.

Long story short, I left the company for a new job in Kansas City at the end of 2013. Changing employers after so many years was stressful and challenging, but I eventually adapted to my new environment.

My social media, however, has not.

I still have all those old co-workers in my digital world, many whom I have not seen in the real world in nearly two years. LinkedIn is always encouraging me to connect with other people at my old company, even though LinkedIn knows damn well I don’t work there anymore. My news feed on Facebook is filled with posts by former colleagues. Many of the posts recount amusing things that just happened with coworkers at the place where I used to work. Back in the day, those posts were kind of funny. Now, they just make me nostalgic.

I have since blocked a few of those Facebook friends.

I know what I need to do. I’m not stupid. I need to sit down and coldly, calmly assess which friends from my past I want to keep, and which ones I need to cut loose. Many of them would not notice or care if I unfriended them today.

So I will do that sometime, after my child is put to bed and the laundry is done, and I am not exhausted from all the other things I had to do on that particular day. I will sit down, crack open a beer, and start clicking those little gray boxes next to some of my Facebook friends’ names.

It’s a small, almost silly problem to have, all these people in your digital Rolodex who are no longer an active part of your life. Still, given how big a role social media plays in many of our lives, I wonder what it does to our psyche? Even after you’re ready to move to a new chapter of your life, your social media accounts remain firmly rooted in your history.

And what happens when you make the ultimate move, to that Big Social Network in the Sky? Should your accounts be deleted, or should they be used to memorialize your life? These are questions that are being taken very seriously. Facebook recently unveiled a new policy that allows users to designate a “legacy contact” to manage their wall when they die. Many wills and trusts now contain similar language about what to do with all the social media accounts when the trustor passes on.

Like it or not, these are the kinds of things we have to deal with today. Makes me want to go delete my Facebook account right now. I would do it, too, if it weren’t such a big part of my life.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Want More Readers? Write Something Negative.

Tags

blogging, Facebook, negativity, social media, Stephen Roth, sucks

I have been blogging for more than two years now. I have written about a wide range of topics, from pop culture to politics to parenthood. Most of my posts garner a handful of views, a couple of “likes,” and are then forgotten. I’m good with that. The Internet provides us with a seemingly infinite number of new reading options every day, and I am grateful to the people who take a couple of minutes to read my work.

There is one post I have written, however, that continues to draw more and more readers, even though it was published seven months ago. The post is titled “10 Amazing Reasons Why Facebook Sucks.” Last year, the post had 1,512 views (by comparison, my second most popular post had 187 views). This year, just a little more than two months into 2015, my screed about the annoying facets of Facebook has already been viewed a whopping 2,518 times. On average, more than 40 people find “10 Amazing Reasons Why Facebook Sucks” and click on it every day.

Why is this particular essay so much more popular than all the others? Good question. The main reason is a little something called search engine optimization. If you go to Google’s search engine and type the words, “Facebook sucks,” or “why Facebook sucks,” my post is the second article that appears on the first search page you see (a much more crass article on Cracked.com titled, “Why Facebook Sucks” appears at the top of the page).

Apparently, a lot of people around the world conduct Google searches with the words “Facebook sucks” every day. Some of these people click on my post, glance at it and, in most cases, immediately leave my blog. Today, according to WordPress, my post has been visited by people in India, Germany, Romania, Slovenia and Singapore. The Internet is a wonderful thing, bringing all of us together to share in our universal frustration – and obsession – with social media.

So, if you’re a new blogger who is struggling to write that one post that will generate thousands of views (and exactly $0.00 in revenue), my advice would be to write something that has a title with the word “suck” in it. “Why the Yankees Suck,” “What Sucks About 50 Shades of Grey,” “Winter Sucks.” The topic does not really matter, as long as it’s about something for which a large swath of the population shares a deep, abiding distaste.

Sad to say, but these are the cynical, snarky Internet times we live in. A lot of the posts I write are positive. Okay, some of the posts I write are positive. Not long ago, I wrote a loving little essay about our dog on her 10th birthday. People love dogs, right? That post earned 52 views last year. Exactly one person clicked on it in 2015. Again, I’m fine with that, but maybe I should have included more photos of the dog, particularly when she was a puppy?

I’m going to try to be a more positive, upbeat blogger in 2015, but please don’t fault me if a certain four-letter word that begins with an “s” and ends with a “k” works its way into my prose.

Gotta try to keep my numbers up.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

The Sadness of the Selfie

Tags

buzzfeed, Facebook, humor, media, obama, observations, oscars, president, selfie, selfie stick, twitter

Me, in my car today.

There once was a time not too long ago when taking pictures of yourself could only mean that you didn’t have anyone in your life to take your picture for you.

Nobody took selfies, not even with Polaroid cameras. To do so would admit to the world that you were either a pathetic, lonely loser, or someone who was extremely egotistical. A self-taken picture was sad and embarrassing, like a teen-aged boy caught playing alone with a football and making his own crowd noise in the backyard.

Times have changed.

Anyone with a smartphone knows that selfies are now an accepted, and frequent, form of social expression. Even the President takes them. If you missed the BuzzFeed video from a week ago of the Commander-in-Chief mugging around with a Selfie Stick, here it is.

Obama took a lot of flack for it, just as he does for everything else. I feel for the guy, but I have to admit that there’s something embarrassing about the Most Powerful Man in the World, the one responsible for our foreign policy and all our troops oversees, staring self-consciously and making faces at his phone like an eighth-grader. The message of the video seems to be, “Hey, the President is a regular guy, just like you.” That is not a sentiment that fills me with a rush of confidence.

It would be easy for me to plant a flag in the ground and say, “Hey, we weren’t taking pictures of ourselves back in the 1980s and 90s.” The reality is that we probably would have been if the technology were around to make it so easy to do. Selfies are not making us more narcissistic. We have always been narcissistic. Selfies just make our narcissism more obvious to the outside world. Maybe that is a form of public service.

I don’t take selfies very often. One reason is that I have short arms, and I only learned about the existence of the Selfie Stick about a week ago. Another reason is I don’t think very many people are interested in viewing self-generated photos of me. A third reason is plain old sheepishness: a selfie posted on Facebook or Twitter seems squeamishly revealing, like inviting someone I don’t know very well to come over to my house and watch me make faces in the bathroom mirror.

I should just get over myself. The selfie is here to stay. Neil Patrick Harris is already bragging about how his selfie at the upcoming Oscars is going to top Ellen’s selfie from last year’s Oscars! What can you say? People love it! We selfie, therefore we are, or however that old saying goes.

In a way, selfies may be the most honest form of expression, and may reveal more about ourselves than we intend. I’m going to try to remember that the next time I take a photo of my feet in front of a swimming pool.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

10 Amazing Reasons why Facebook Sucks

Tags

advertising, Facebook, friends, observations, people, politics, social habits, social media

Once upon a time, Facebook was a happy place. Friends shared cute photos of their kids or their pets. People wrote witty little observations or mini-stories in 100 words or less. Occasionally, someone would ask for a restaurant recommendation. Maybe they would explain why they liked a certain movie or song. The response among friends would be instantaneous and usually thoughtful. Unlike Twitter, Facebook was truly interactive. Reactions and conversations fueled Facebook’s growing appeal.

That was a long time ago. Today, Facebook is like a once-thriving neighborhood now littered with payday loan stores, political campaign signs and ugly billboards. The sidewalks that were once filled with friendly pedestrians are mostly vacant. Neighbors don’t venture outside to talk to one another much anymore.

I’ve come up with a top 10 list of things I dislike about Facebook mostly because lists seem to be the only way we can communicate and process information these days. Maybe you will agree with some of my observations. Some of them you will certainly find to be cranky and old man-ish. Anyway, here they are–10 Amazing Reasons Why Facebook Sucks:

#1. Personal Branding. Participating on Facebook has become less about sharing information and more about managing your own personal brand. I’m as guilty of this as anyone and probably more than most. The past several months, I have been using Facebook to promote my novel to an extent that even I am now tired of writing about it (it is delightful book, by the way). Even if I didn’t have a product to pitch, I would still probably spend way too much time thinking about my Facebook persona. A few weeks ago, Father’s Day rolled around and I felt this strange obligation to post something about the holiday. Why would I feel that was an important thing to do? It’s not like I’m paid to write about Father’s Day, or that anyone beyond a dozen people would care about my thoughts on the occasion. Ten years ago, I would not have considered sending out a blast email to all of my friends and contacts about Father’s Day. Why do I feel pressured to do so now, to compete against other peoples’ personal brands with my own Father’s Day post? It doesn’t seem healthy.

#2. Advertising. It is no big revelation that Facebook uses your personal data to sell you things. This was first revolutionized by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, when he used bookselling as a tool to learn peoples’ personal tastes and how to market to them. Facebook is just following suit. Still, it is irritating to scroll through my news feed and see one ad after another for the Dollar Shave Club. I don’t go to Facebook to buy stuff. I want to find out what my friends are doing.

#3. Politics. Hey, friend who used to write amusing posts about his family, sports and pop culture–I get it. You hate the Republicans. They’re destroying the country. I may agree with you on most points but that doesn’t mean I want to read every single article you share from The Huffington Post, Politico or MSNBC. I’ve got news for you, political friend. You are talking to the same circle of agreeable buddies while everyone else has tuned you out. You have not changed anyone’s mind about the important political issues of the day.

#4. Shares. It seems to me that most of us on Facebook have migrated from writing original posts to just sharing news articles, memes or surveys that we find amusing. Now, we can even share streaming videos that stream whether the viewer wants them to or not. The result is a visual cluster with no rhyme or reason. Just glancing at my feed right now, I see “29 Terrifying Panorama Fails That Will Haunt Your Nightmares,” a meme about getting up when life knocks you down, an ad about paying off my mortgage and “26 Struggles Anyone Raised Catholic Will Totally Understand.” Some days, finding a text post in your news feed that actually tells you what somebody is doing with their life is like discovering a rare, precious jewel.

#5. Misinformation. I was guilty of this the other day. I shared a piece about how much time people spend on their phones that was, upon closer examination, probably made up. I’ve also seen a quote about funding for the arts attributed to Winston Churchill that he never said. There is a lot of bogus stuff on the Internet, and we all get fooled every now and then. Lately, however, I’ve noticed “friends” trying to trick each other with misinformation. For example, an article about a celebrity death that you click on only to find the headline, “You been owned!” Shame on me for having a morbid curiosity about one of the stars of The Walking Dead, I guess.

#6. Narcissism. This one is nothing new. Facebook and other social media have made all of us more narcissistic. Still, I believe that the problem is evolving from “self-absorbed” to “totally lacking in self-awareness.” Yes, you may be a good friend, but that doesn’t mean I want to be updated four times a day about your latest adventures in Cancun. It just makes me jealous. Also, sometimes it’s a little irritating to be part of a mass layoff from a company you worked at for eight years, and then read posts from your former co-workers gushing about how cool it is to work for that company. That’s my bad, of course. I don’t have to read those posts and, in the future, I won’t be friending as many co-workers on Facebook.

#7. Unoriginal Narcissism. Back when everyone got digital cameras on their phones, some people truly believed that the quality of experimental photography would explode. What we’ve gotten, instead, is people taking the same damn types of pictures as everyone else, in addition to a gluttony of photo-bombs and selfies. I really don’t care to see your feet, even if they are landscaped against a beautiful Caribbean beach. That photo has been done a million times before. The only feet I really care about seeing belong to my wife and my child, and that’s it.

#8. Anger and Negativity. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to use social media to complain about your problems, take shots at a former spouse or cuss about that stupid thing Obama did. I just think it reflects poorly on a person’s character (just like writing a 1,300-word screed about Facebook probably reflects poorly on my character). It is also important to note that those comments never really go away. Even if you delete them, which Facebook now allows, those posts are floating out there somewhere. Someday, your angry vents on Facebook may work against you. Also, if negativity becomes an important part of your personal brand (see #1 above), even your friends will stop reading and caring.

#9. Meddling. Based on what you share and with whom you interact, Facebook thinks it knows you better than you know yourself. That is why only certain friends, products and stories keep showing up in your news feed. Eventually this can become a form of mind control. If I haven’t interacted with my friend George for six months, his updates and shares will disappear from my feed. Since I never see anything from George, I assume he is no longer active on Facebook. Pretty soon, I stop thinking about George because, unless I look up his profile, I am not connected to his life. Ultimately it’s my fault for not picking up the phone and giving George a call, but Facebook still plays a subtle part in bringing us closer to some friends and distancing us from others. That power over what and who we care about is frightening.

So there you have it—-nine reasons why Facebook definitely sucks. Wait, did I say there were 10 reasons? Well, I can’t think of a 10th reason.

I guess Facebook really isn’t so bad after all.

Stephen Roth is author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter