A template for every awful Facebook discussion you've ever witnessed.

January 23, 2011 3:03 PM

A template for every awful Facebook discussion you've ever witnessed. [previously]
posted by feelinglistless (42 comments total)

is this something i'd need a friendsterspace to flooz
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:04 PM on January 23, 2011

Facebook discussion?
posted by kuujjuarapik at 3:05 PM on January 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

They forgot "[Your grandmother or elderly aunt] likes this."
posted by saturday_morning at 3:05 PM on January 23, 2011 [12 favorites]

I chuckled.
posted by fixedgear at 3:06 PM on January 23, 2011

Facebook discussion?

Yeah, where someone posts a link to something, and a bunch of asshats they barely know and never normally talk to suddenly start slinging opinions and wisecracks at it.

Can't believe that doesn't sound familiar...
posted by hermitosis at 3:07 PM on January 23, 2011 [9 favorites]

Double
posted by gwint at 3:09 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

See also.
posted by Anatoly Pisarenko at 3:09 PM on January 23, 2011 [7 favorites]

Ah, the hometown friend. Heh.
posted by the young rope-rider at 3:14 PM on January 23, 2011

No.
posted by timsteil at 3:19 PM on January 23, 2011

With saturday_morning's addition, this is such an extremely accurate example of the stuff that floats around on my news feed it's scary. And I have a "friend" from middle school who re-tweets Glenn Beck, so it tends to happen a lot.
posted by phunniemee at 3:21 PM on January 23, 2011

Like so many things, I would like this on a t-shirt. I hear there is an app for that.
posted by LMGM at 3:31 PM on January 23, 2011

Ya, I tend to just de-friend people who use Facebook as a political platform to prevent myself from going into HULK SMASH mode. It just makes me angry to read the "Hey, [x] party is stupid and anyone who obviously can't see otherwise is just stupid." Or most the time, the "anyone who obviously can't see otherwise" aspect isn't explicitly said and just rather implied, but when you call them out on it, they just get all pissed off calling you the jackass.
posted by jmd82 at 3:37 PM on January 23, 2011

This sort of mediocre post makes me long for the bygone days of Mirsky's Worst of the Web.
posted by charlie don't surf at 3:37 PM on January 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's no coincidence that facebook and metafilter are both blue.
posted by HuronBob at 3:40 PM on January 23, 2011

Oh, no wonder so many of you hate Facebook, if this is the type of thing your friends get up to. I've never seen it happen.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 3:41 PM on January 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

True of personal blog commentary as well. The subject is irrelevant but the template fits.
posted by mermayd at 3:55 PM on January 23, 2011

I must have more mellow friends than these people do. I haven't seen to many big arguments on Facebook. Mostly it's stuff about the weather or sports or pictures of grandkids.
posted by octothorpe at 3:57 PM on January 23, 2011

Ya, I tend to just de-friend people who use Facebook as a political platform to prevent myself from going into HULK SMASH mode.

Not sure if this is something everyone else already knows, but I only discovered it relatively recently: you can click the X icon on a post in your news feed and then select "Hide all posts from [this person]." That way you don't have to the offender clogging up your feed and inspiring HULK SMASHes, but you don't have to deal with any awkwardness that can come from de-friending.
posted by Anatoly Pisarenko at 4:00 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Things like this remind me of something the woman who ran the mailing list where I got most of that behavior out of my system in the late 90s said: if a person doesn't add something to your day, there's no reason to put up with them. Hiding is definitely a first resort, but repeat offenders of any type get removed from my Facebook.
posted by immlass at 4:14 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

This doesn't fit my experience with Facebook, but could have a year or so ago. Between the sheer volume of stuff and the angry people who didn't seem that angry when I knew them in high school, I got fed up and took the time to look at each person on my friends list and ask "if I ran into this person on the street, would it be a shame if we had to part company after chatting for a minute or two?" I dropped all the "no" people.

I get the impression that muting people might have a two-way effect, too, preserving the friend status but maybe making you less likely to turn up in their "top news." I suspect that only because someone I know (and muted) asked why I'd stopped posting so much even though my habits hadn't changed at all. Since I occasionally put the shouty ones that still pass the two-minute test into timeout by muting them, that might also be why I never see anything like this.
posted by mph at 4:15 PM on January 23, 2011

Oh, no wonder so many of you hate Facebook, if this is the type of thing your friends get up to.

This is how the entire internet is, not just Facebook. The reason I hate Facebook is that it is just like the internet, only privatized.
posted by DU at 4:31 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

For me, this rings more true of here than Facebook. My Facebook friends rarely get political and thank god for that. They do get religious from time to time though but that's easier to ignore. The embarrassing hometown friend is brilliant, though.

See also.

YouTube comments are the best. It's fun to see how many comments it takes until somebody calls either the subject or maker of the video, regardless of content, a "fag". It's usually less than five.
posted by Jess the Mess at 4:33 PM on January 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is lazy comedy writing at its worst: when the premise is not only lazy but simply wrong. Facebook is friends and friends-of-friends so the conversations are almost always more civil than they would be anywhere else online.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:24 PM on January 23, 2011

Quote.

Witty observation.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:37 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I only read the fake facebook conversations posted on reddit. But this seems spot on!
posted by Ad hominem at 5:49 PM on January 23, 2011

This is lazy comedy writing at its worst: when the premise is not only lazy but simply wrong. Facebook is friends and friends-of-friends so the conversations are almost always more civil than they would be anywhere else online.

Yes, there is less "DIE IN A FIRE" than on Usenet, but the above is a reasonable template, for, say, this.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:54 PM on January 23, 2011

My name is Spoobnooble, and I am a Lazy Activist.
posted by spoobnooble at 5:57 PM on January 23, 2011

Seriously, here is the article to prove it (I think). I found it by Googling "lazy activist":

http://notaslazyasyouthink.blogspot.com/2010/12/activism-in-internet-age-how-carton.html

/belated attempt at retroactive humour
posted by spoobnooble at 6:05 PM on January 23, 2011

I am actually having one of these conversations RIGHT NOW.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:44 PM on January 23, 2011

Gay slur.
posted by hermitosis at 6:56 PM on January 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

I actually got a few angry comments A couple days ago after posting:

"I feel like everyone thinks that Portlandia show is funny out of sympathy for Fred Armisen because he married a Scientologist."

Seriously. People got mad that I made fun of that show. Facebook is awful.
posted by orville sash at 7:01 PM on January 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Old school equivalent.
posted by ZakDaddy at 7:09 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

What about the screenshot with the names blurred out that gets posted on reddit.
posted by empath at 10:57 PM on January 23, 2011

I studiously avoid any "heavy" subjects like religion or politics on Facebook, but I got fished in after the Tucson shooting. Me:

Are you seriously posting stuff about the NRA and handguns the day after some nutbar used his legal handgun to shoot a congress person, a federal judge, and a 9 year old? That's kind of tone deaf at the very least.

I mean, to each his own opinion, etc. but come on, man.

This in response to a photo of some smiling woman brandishing a revolver and advertising some sort of open carry foundation newsletter, first thing when I woke up in the morning.

Predictably, the thread went very much like the template. I renewed my resolve to never take the bait. Which makes me sad, because it lets all of "them" have their echo chambers where they get to be convinced simply everyone thinks like they do (except for the lying media, of course.) I just don't have the energy to argue with brick walls all day. I know arguing wouldn't help either, but at least they wouldn't be able to pretend that nobody (of consequence) disagrees with them.
posted by ctmf at 11:11 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

You know, I wish I could say that I've never posted any political status messages...

... but I was real pissed off when Obama extended the Bush tax cuts.
posted by Afroblanco at 11:56 PM on January 23, 2011

Quite amusing. I admit I snorted at:

The Bait-taker: Wow... is that last paragraph true?

The Lazy Activist: I have no idea. But yes.
posted by Decani at 4:07 AM on January 24, 2011

Sometimes you just have to turn facebook off. It's like a soothing balm that cures you of rapid, circular, malformed thinking.

Luddite? Maybe. Happier? Yes!
posted by Arquimedez Pozo at 5:20 AM on January 24, 2011

Predictably, the thread went very much like the template. I renewed my resolve to never take the bait. Which makes me sad, because it lets all of "them" have their echo chambers where they get to be convinced simply everyone thinks like they do (except for the lying media, of course.)

Doesn't that happen every time St. Alia comments on a thread? I love MeFi, but there's definitely an echo in here, too.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:29 AM on January 24, 2011

To the extent that people provide some justification, even anecdotal or emotional, instead of just dropping one-liner contrarian assertions into threads (and not to get too personal, but St. Alia has been much better about this from what I've noticed), I think MeFi goes pretty well, considering. You can't really expect most people to change their opinions in the short span of one conversation. It's the people that just repeat scripted talking points cribbed off of a web site somewhere regardless of relevance to what I just said that exasperate me into giving up. Then they take my giving up as a victory which reinforces their rightness, so while I'd like to at least put in a token "that's not the only reasonable opinion," or sometimes even a "do you realize how ridiculous that is if you think about it for one second?" I think even engaging is a net negative.

I'd hate to not get to read them, though. I'm not really that educated, but even I can see when my argument needs to take another angle, is addressing the wrong thing, or even when to just STFU. These people I'm talking about are train-wreck fascinatingly unable to even pay attention to the other person except to watch for when it's their turn to cut/paste something they barely understand. MeFi is generally Not Like That, which is nice.
posted by ctmf at 7:02 AM on January 24, 2011

Facebook is nothing but a soap box for assholes. I've seen 50 line threads arguing football teams that leads to personal attacks regarding families, their income, how their kid was conceived (ART). I've also seen a contact go around and just post inflammatory, very Republican comments on everything from healthcare to again, sports.

So friggen stupid. Just post your "I tooted" status and get off the damn FB.
posted by stormpooper at 8:59 AM on January 24, 2011

personal attacks regarding families, their income, how their kid was conceived (ART).

I hope that when I conceive a child, the worst personal attack that can be levied on the act is that it was too much like ART. "Your fertilization technique is entirely SPECTACLE! There's no true demonstration of mastered craftsmanship, you merely portray the broadest aspects in grand fashion, you POLTROON."
posted by FatherDagon at 9:19 AM on January 24, 2011

I was not able to read that page because of the flashing, moving "Don't miss this" block that was full of stuff I hoped to miss.

I used firebug to delete that block, so I'll give it another shot, but dang. Those little bars of moving crud are getting more and more popular these days. Live twitter feeds and whatnot. And I don't want to adblock them because they're not technically ads. Just crap. Crapblock. Seriously.
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 10:50 AM on January 24, 2011