The Cardinal Sins of Facebook

acebook has become as ubiquitous as Google these days. In fact, if Facebook were it's own country, it'd be the third most populous nation in the world, ahead of the United States and behind India and China.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I was on Facebook in 2005, the year after it went public (became available to universities outside the Ivy League). I've been able to watch its dizzying ascent to Internet stardom, and at the same time, notice (and possible contribute to) its unwritten set of rules.

As these rules are unwritten, it is easier to point out when they are broken. Thus, The Cardinal Sins of Facebook.

1. Unending Game Requests

When Facebook opened its doors to third-party developers, the Internet itself went crazy. Everyone and their mother's uncle had an app to add. Gaming app developers soon figured out that making users request their friends to complete various in-game tasks equaled a lot more users.

That petered out about a year ago, though. Everyone is now using the apps they want to be using. It has plateaued. Developers are still under the impression that the growth will be exponential, so they haven't tweaked their systems at all. Newbie Facebook users (as well as clueless ones) therefore continue to request you join their mafia, become their farm neighbor, or answer awkwardly personal questions about them. And no amount of begging from you will stop it.

Absolution: If you see a request you don't like, Facebook has gloriously added a "block application" button. Use it liberally.

2. The Baiting Status

I remember a time before Facebook status updates.

Just let that sink in a while.

When statuses went live, Facebook users were all college students. We all experimented with the status function, either updating everyone about every little thing going on in our lives, or just ignoring the feature all together. The usage leveled out to activity updates, newsworthy accomplishments, interesting links, and even the occasional gloating status.

Then Facebook opened its cyberdoors to any and everyone with a email address. Thus, we got a slew of microblogging the day's events, spam ads, and the worst offender of them all, The Baiting Status (aka the Sympathy Fisher).

"really wishes some people would just grow up!"

"feels crappy."

"just wants life to be normal! please!!!!"

The list, unfortunately, goes on forever. These tricky statuses are designed to bait you into asking what's wrong, prompting either a pissed-off "nothing" reply, or a long paragraph you have no intention of reading.

Absolution: DON'T REPLY. If you know the person and are genuinely concerned about them, private message them or call them (and tell them not to post that crap on Facebook anymore).

3. The Copy-and-paste Status

These are the Facebook equivalent of chain letters.

"♥♥♥ put this on your status if you or somebody you know has suffered BABY LOSS ♥♥♥ the majority won't put it on, because unlike cancer baby loss is a taboo ♥♥♥ break the silence ♥♥♥"

I have no idea what that particular status means, but you know what I'm getting at.

When I was "researching" this topic via my own Facebook status, someone said this: "[I hate] copy and paste status updates that guilt you into thinking you don't love your husband, mother, children, sister, God, whatever if you don't paste it as your own."

That pretty much sums it up.

Absolution: If you aren't that friendly with the offender in real life, defriend them and move on. If that would cause unnecessary strife, simply delete them from your News Feed by clicking the "Hide" button next to their name.

4. Old(er) people using internet acronyms from 1998

Seriously guys. Many more people can type quickly these days, foregoing the need for "G2G," "LOL," "AFK," and any number of MSN Messenger-bred acronyms from our middle-school days. The old(er) people on Facebook seemed to have just discovered them, and are therefore using them as liberally as we did back in the day. Shudder.

They're even inventing their own. On one status last week I saw both "PTL" and "WTG" in one status. The first is for "Praise the Lord," and I believe the second is "Way to go."

Really? We need acronyms for that?

Absolution: I dunno, offer to pay for typing lessons for the offender. To prevent yourself from giving in to acronym temptation, just type the same things you would say in person. It usually comes out sounding much more human, and less like a 7th-grader in 1998 on his Gateway computer talking to his friends on MSN.

5. Not realizing the difference between a message and a wall post

While none of my Facebook friends have made this mistake, failbook.com has a large collection of such offenders.

The foremost example is located here, but be forewarned, the language is very, um, private (NSFW).

Facebook (and Internet in general) newbies often complain of "all the stuff." No matter how simplistic and easy Facebook makes their layout, someone is inevitably typing stuff into the wrong box, complaining about changes (see number six), and sending people public posts about private issues.

Absolution: KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. Teach those less fortunate than you.

6. Complaining every time Facebook tweaks its layout

Goodness is this ever an epidemic. Every time Facebook changes its UI, people get in an uproar over "the new facebook." They complain about not knowing where anything is, that it looks stupid, that facebook shouldn't just change without asking people, etc., etc., etc.

Facebook is a company. They own the website. They are allowed to change it as they see fit. I would venture a guess and say that 80% of the changes made are beneficial to users. Whether it's a layout change like moving the notifications to the top of the screen or adding cleaner lines to the New Feed, it seems as if the general public is unhappy. They want things the old way. They want Facebook to never ever change.

If the Internet never changed or upgraded its looks, we'd be browsing News Feeds on something like this:

Absolution: Stop whining. That is all.