Get off my Facebook!
Family can be so lame. They can be annoying, embarrassing and downright awful.
But we love them and can overlook some of these shortcomings.
Your friends on Facebook however, might not.
Grandma unloading all those old memories that should have stayed memories. Dad tagging you in inappropriate and admittedly funny posts that you would never acknowledge otherwise.
Your friends load up on all sorts of deadly social ammunition as your relatives tighten the noose with every misused hash tag, baby photo and dreadful dad joke.
Facebook is predominantly a social application. They even call people on your Facebook ‘friends’. It was not created with familial structures in mind.
Example: I love my Nannie, my mothers’ mother. She’s cool. But she has a particularly frustrating habit of posting every photo she’s ever taken onto her Facebook page and tagging her family. Do I want my mates to see me in the bath with my sister? I understand it was cute when we were 3 and 5 years old, but, dude, we’re 15 and 17 now! Seriously? In the bath? And she tagged us both!
Now, what those of you older than 25 might not realise is, if you are tagged in a Facebook post, all of your friends will see the post. So if it’s you in the bath with your sister… well I’m going to let your imagination run wild on the response from your peers.
And we’ve all seen that hilarious post about the ‘stripper’, or how sexy I was at that party last weekend, or a bad joke that’s too funny not to ‘like’ or tag a mate with an eloquent quip attached. Facebook being Facebook feels the need to share these digital improprieties on your feed and your ‘friends’ will likely find them funny.
Who will not find it funny is your 70 year old grandmother who most definitely will not ‘like’ them and almost die from heartbreak that her dear, sweet grandchild “liked” such things.
It’s not as if I don’t want to keep in touch with my grandparents, or my aunt in America, or my really cool uncle in Dunedin. But do I want them on my Facebook?
No. I do not. Sorry Nannie, but I really don’t.
So to conclude, as much as Facebook is great for sharing moments of teenage brilliance and intelligent behaviour, it’s not great for keeping on the good side of the relatives.
I want to my family to see the parts of my journey to adulthood that I choose them to see, not what some moron with photoshop posted about me — which is entirely not true by the way!
And I want to see them too — it’s not all one way, I’m not that selfish. Much. I have a couple of nieces in Dunedin and I’d probably check out what they’re doing more if my mother wasn’t waving the physically posted photographs in my face. Seriously, that just makes me have to feign interest purely because I can’t allow my parents to see through my swag façade.
So here it is family. Get off my Facebook. Don’t tag me in anything! But I love you. Let’s keep in touch!
-Luis Munro
Luis is 17-going-on-Frank Sinatra. Self-entitled champion of the dinner table debating club, Luis is in his final year at Mount Aspiring College in Wanaka, New Zealand. He looks forward to a future in bio-chemical engineering so he can ‘genetically modify humanity.’
Originally published at www.kin2kin.com.
