|
I've come to realize that there is one reason I'm happy to see my relatives posting all this political and jesus glurge on facebook. It means I'm not getting it in my email. Ever since my mother in law figured out how to use facebook, the volume of Fwd: Fwd: Re: Fwd: Fwd: SUPER FUNNY / OUTRAGE / JESUS LOVES YOU / LOOK OUT FOR GANG MEMBERS email I get has decreased dramatically.
However, this zen state requires you to apply the McNutty Facebook System, which I will share with you now for free.
1) Create a new facebook account. Give it a silly name that nobody will connect with you. There's a friend of a friend in my network named Poopinstein von Wrigglesbottom, but I don't think you should go that silly. It should sound like a real person's name, just in case Facebook cracks down on obviously-fake accounts. Let's say, something like Wellington J Hefflinger.
2) Friend-request all of your actual friends from this new account. Send them a note saying "hey, accept my friend request. this is actually <your real name>."
3) Go back to your real name account and unfriend everyone except your annoying relatives. This is now your family account. You basically never have to post anything here except the occasional kid picture for the grannies and aunts to ooh and aah over.
4) Use the Wellington J Hefflinger account to post all the stuff you'd normally post, with one caveat: you should be careful not to post any pictures of yourself or personally-identifying information, and you should be careful when you comment on things that your relatives might see. For example, don't respond to your wife's post (who is likely friends with people who are banished to your family account) with "I LIKE BEING MARRIED TO YOU, MY LOVELY WIFE".
5) Whenever anyone in your family asks about anything on Facebook, you should say "oh yeah, I have an account, but I don't really use it much."
Every once in a while, you log into your real-name account and brace yourself for a torrent of glurgey shit, so you can see if you have any messages, and maybe take a survey of who in your family has been mouthing off about what these days. It's not actually that bad if you can mentally prepare yourself for it.
I have been using this system for years and I really do think it's the recipe for Facebook happiness. There are some downsides, of course, but overall they're not too bad. There's the risk that Facebook cracks down on using fake names, which there have been rumors about in the past, but so far they haven't come to fruition. There's the fact that it's difficult for people to remember who the hell Wellington J Hefflinger is, but people who actually care about you won't forget, and that's really all that matters. You reduce the pool of people who are going to find you and connect with you on facebook, but I think that's as much a benefit as it is a drawback. Oh, and never posting any personally-identifiable information seems like being deceitful at first, but it actually turns out that's just a smart thing to do anyway, so having a concrete boogeyman (your relatives might find you) that's avoided in the same way as a more nebulous boogeyman (hackers, identity thieves, stalkers) is kind of a good thing.
|