If You Can't Say Something Nice, Don't Say Anything on Facebook

Thursday, October 30, 2014

A couple weeks ago, I joined a Facebook group for people from my hometown. Members use the space to post old photos, share memories of people/places/events past, & link to obituaries of well-known folks from the community. Mostly, though, the group serves as a virtual bulletin board where current residents can ask questions - everything from, "Where's the best place to buy new tires?" to "Why is there so much traffic on ____ Street right now?"

Another trend in this group is people posting photos of creepy-crawlies they find in/on/around their homes with captions like, "What kind of spider is this?" which means all these spider photos show up in my newsfeed & basically ruin my life. Example:



You're welcome for the light blur. Because I care about you.

But anyway.

Predictably, a lot of bitching also happens within this group. Like... a lot of bitching. There's a lot of bitching generally, but there's also a lot of bitching at one another, & things tend to escalate quickly.
Sometimes I turn on the notifications just so I can go back & scroll through the comments when I don't have anything better to do. (I mean, I always have something better to do, but that doesn't mean I'm actually doing it.)

Yesterday, for example, someone posted to the group asking where she should take her cat to be declawed. Her usual vet quoted her $150, she said, & she didn't think it ought to cost that much. When other group members asked that she reconsider her plans to declaw (given the Humane Society's analogy that it's akin to cutting off a person's fingers at the knuckles), a full-on comment war erupted. Just an hour after the original post, it boasted 146 comments & growing (including a few from people who pointed out that the original poster has twice mentioned her cat's destruction of her $300 curtains, but somehow thinks $150 is too much to pay for a surgical procedure on an actual living thing? Priorities.)

I really wanted to comment on the declawing debacle. I wanted to be all holier-than-thou & comment something like, "Perhaps the 'judgment' you're hearing is just from folks who aren't down with the idea of butchering our beloved family pets? How dare we, I know." Because I am not at all sassy or indignant.

But I didn't.

I've commented a few times on past posts, sharing suggestions for my favorite eye doctor or the local gym where I worked in college (because I'm nothing if not brand-loyal & also very opinionated). For the most part, though, aside from the occasional recommendation, I keep quiet for two reasons:
  1. My mother's job makes her what you might call a community figure in our small town. We have an uncommon, identifiable last name that easily links me to her, & she has more than once pointed out that my occasional loud-mouthiness, though always well-intentioned, has the potential to be pretty annoying for her,

    and also,
  2. Facebook's stupid algorithms seem to alert all of my hometown friends every time I comment in this group, which is terribly embarrassing. If I was humiliated the time it broadcasted my comment about where/how to exchange foreign currency, I'm definitely going to want to crawl under a rock when it shares news of my, uh, slightly snarkier comments.
I love my mom, & it's important to me, of course, that I not accidentally tarnish her reputation in any way. But (sorry, Mom) the second reason is equally compelling, because there's nothing more mortifying than Facebook's algorithms. While I'm not actually embarrassed of the words I think to post, I'm more embarrassed by the concept of being a person who posts in a community Facebook group. Actually, I'm embarrassed by the concept of being a person who blogs about posting in a community Facebook group, too, but a girl can't be too proud, yanno?

And so I stayed quiet yesterday, even when the conversation took a turn for the amusing & Laura, the original poster, started lashing out at any commenter who noted the inhumanity of declawing. Finally, this happened:


At that point, all I wanted to comment was "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" because the whole thing had really jumped the shark. But I think the guy who posted this photo really summed it up best:


So carry on, Facebook. Imma be over here, watching from the sidelines & playing a comment reel in my mind.

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