I have to point out that none of the following have happened to actual people I’m actually friends with – but it does seem that some people need a lesson in how to behave on Facebook. Some days, FB seems more like a really, really bad episode of Jeremy Kyle coming straight to the computer screen. I think everyone needs these rules.
1. If you have an ‘infection’ that is too embarrassing for ‘Embarrassing Bodies’, don’t, repeat, don’t post about it on FB.
2. If your boyfriend is excited that you are getting treatment for aforementioned ‘infections’ so that he can continue to have back-door sex with you, please remind him not to post about his excitement, either.
3. The ‘relationship’ button is there for people in a relationship. Not for people who’d like to be in a relationship with someone they just met.
4. The ‘relationship’ button isn’t a way of telling people you’ve had a tiff with your lover. Going from ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single’ to ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single’ to ‘in a relationship’ in two hours is just FB’s way of telling you that you and your intended are destined NOT to be in a relationship and should end it now.
5. FB should be the last to know you are in a relationship or you are single. In fact, if you are getting divorced, leave ‘married’ until the ink is dry. And if you are in a relationship, wait until the ink is dry on the marriage certificate, or else you run the risk of dooming yourself with the FB curse (like the Hello! curse, but for everyone but Katie Price and Kerry Katona)
6. Don’t post up ‘funny’ pictures of your baby with a bong. Someone did this. Really. And then they were shocked when social services came round and drugs-tested her child and then took the baby away.
7. Don’t post up things your children would be embarrassed by. I don’t mean ‘good’ embarrassed (like the picture of my dad in a turban or the one where he looks a little like Toad of Toad Hall) or the one of your boyfriend passed out in the toilet, I mean bad embarrassed, like revealing you have a too-embarrassing-for-Embarrassing-Bodies-infection and your boyfriend is delighted you have the right antibiotics to clear it up so normal back-door services can resume.
8. Don’t post up pictures of you absolutely rat-arsed as a grown-up if you have kids on FB. That’s not what they want to see.
9. Don’t comment on or ‘like’ all your kids’ pictures. That just makes you look like a stalker.
10. Expect your kids to do things you don’t want to see. And ignore them. There will be pictures of them in compromising positions, there will be inappropriate language and things you never wished to hear come from their tiny little fingers. They don’t realise yet that you don’t want to see that. Don’t let it be an argument. In fact, if you don’t want to see it, block them. Your kids are not your ‘friends’ when they are teenagers or young adults. Wait until they’re 30 or so. Or past being drunk in a toilet.
11. Don’t get into online arguments. Your words are forever recorded and WILL come back to haunt you. The whole point of saying them is that they evaporate into the air. If you put them on Facebook, someone WILL read them and they WILL judge you for it. If you’re the type of person who thinks it’s okay to comment on someone’s photos and call them a nosy, interfering busybody, you haven’t got the slightest bit of sense and should be banned from the ether for all eternity.
12. If you’re older than 21, don’t put those kind of pictures on where you’re in a ridiculously short skirt flashing your gussets. It’s ugly, even if you think it’s not.
13. If you constantly post pictures of you out on the piss, people WILL think you’re a pisshead. Put some pet photos in or a nice picture of the sky from time to time, for God’s sake!
14. If you only have pictures of yourself which you’ve taken yourself with your webcam, you are going to look like a sad muppet. Get someone else to take a photo of you so you don’t look like the kind of person who’s just hanging out on the internet in the vain hope that someone notices how pretty or handsome you are.
15. If you comment on something, know that it WILL come up on other people’s homepages. I have no interest in seeing that you are interested in some slutty porn star or a perma-tanned-orange-woman with fake eyelashes and fish-lips.
16. If you are older than 21, don’t put pictures up of you pouting. It’s U-G-L-Y. Pouting doesn’t look good on pretty young things under the age of 21, let alone saggy old fifty year olds.
17. Don’t put up pictures of you wearing little if you are over 50. It doesn’t even look good on Madonna, OR Helen Mirren, no matter what people say. If you’re white trash 50, it’s definitely not going to look good.
18. If you post a picture of you in a bikini, with your boobs out or with your arse on display, and that picture is obviously one you have taken yourself, don’t blame the world for thinking you are needy, neurotic and possibly a little insane.
19. Don’t post blurry pictures. Why would you do that to my eyes?
20. If you are older than 21, don’t write in text-speak. It makes you look dumb. If you think ‘wiv’ is a good way to write ‘with’, you probably do lots of other things on this list that you shouldn’t. There’s something you can do to help you with that. Go to settings… Go to account… At the bottom, there is a button that says ‘deactivate’. Press it and then throw your computer in the bin or lock it in the loft, if you have one. If you live in a trailer, put it in the crawl space and leave it there.
21. It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool than type a status on FB and remove all doubt.
22. If you bitch, it might get you a reputation as a bitch. Don’t bitch about being thought of as a bitch by people you’ve bitched about in type.
23. If you put up pictures of yourself with hardly any clothes on, you might get a reputation too. Don’t wonder why people think you’re a slag if you’ve got a picture of you in your knickers as your profile pic.
24. People can read what you write. I know that might shock you, but there you go. They can’t just read what you write now, but what you wrote ages ago. If you don’t want them to read it, don’t write it.
25. If you have been on the Jeremy Kyle show, it’s probably not a good idea for you to use facebook AT ALL.
I think that covers everything.
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