Oversharers Anonymous
…someone really needs to set that up.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In the Facebook world that equates to….if you go some place and don’t ‘check-in’, were you really there? If you were to scan the ‘lives’ of some of the friends on my newsfeed, you’d think the answer to that age-old philosophical question would be “apparently not”.
You’d also think that in my 36 years of life I did not have the foresight nor ability to form political opinions of my own, and must adopt those of more politically ‘vocal’ friends.
Or that I was intensely interested in 3 or 4 particular babies/kids/cats, or into snooping on the intimacies of private conversations between lovers or parents and their adult children conducted exclusively via the ‘wall’.
That’s what some of the friends on my newsfeed would have you believe.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about my really close friends, or the friends who give the occasional pithy insight, or check-ins from some exotic faraway land, or link to an eye-opening news article, or much anticipated first photo of their newborn. No. Those updates I like. I’m guilty or those myself (except the newborn one).
No. The friends I’m describing are the oversharers.
You know the oversharers, the ones like my friend who posts new snaps of the fruit of her loins every few days.
How much can a 1 year old kid possibly change in that amount of time? I’ve seen him. He’s cute. So is everyone else’s.
Or the girl who spent the months following her break-up sharing every emotion and nasty-bunny-boiler thought about her (now ex) boyfriend that came to her clearly troubled mind.
Honey, not clever if you ever wanted to find a new one.
Or the plethora of left-wing leaning oversharers who are bombarding my current newsfeed with opinions about who I should and shouldn’t be voting for in an upcoming election.
People….I watch Newsnight, I read the non-Murdoch papers, my world view is well and truly formed thank you very much.
Then there’s the mac daddy of oversharers, the chronic oversharer. Friends, who some days, manage to monopolise up to 50% of your newsfeed with their daily diatribes. I mean…what the actual fuck? Step away from the keyboard already! Are these people aware they’re being such ‘feed hogs?’ (I doubt it, because they’re not the ones having to endure their incessant updates!) Or maybe they are, and by GOD that’s so much worse.
The problem is, the only way I can see less of all these ‘oversharings’ is to ‘hide ‘ someone from my newsfeed, or worse still ‘un-friend’ them. And I don’t want to do that, even though this rant may beg to differ, I like these people. And I do want hear from them. I just wish I didn’t have to hear quite so much of their ‘life noise’.
When did all this ‘oversharing’ become OK?
Before Facebook, if someone rang you up to tell you every ‘fun’ place they’d gone that week, you’d think they were a bragging nut-job. Or foisted their political opinion down your throat every time you saw them you’d politely tell them where to go stick it. Or rattled off obscure literary quotes to make themselves look smarter, you’d declare them a right knob. Or pulled out baby progression snaps or ‘selfies with cat’ at every outing, they’d soon be relegated to the don’t-invite-anywhere-anymore list.
But in the ‘virtual’ world, this has all somehow become acceptable.
Oversharers could learn from old friend of mine, let’s call him Boyd, who recently, after a hiatus of quite literally forever, wrote a Facebook update on his almost virgin Facebook wall. I tell you, it was like the second coming. A stream of comments poured out from mates who were utterly thrilled to hear from him. He’s a serious undersharer, and in the white noise of the newsfeed, they’re really the most valuable contributors.
The old saying “a little mystery goes a long way” should be the mantra of many an oversharer. They’d certainly get all the attention they’re craving more easily that way. Just ask Boyd.
