Facebook, I Love You, but I'm Starting to Hate you.

I read this article today http://gawker.com/5886003/where-did-that-what-people-think-i-do-meme-come-from-and-how-can-it-be-stopped, and it got me thinking. See, I love Facebook. As a stay at home mom who often doesn't venture further than the grocery store for days on end, it is a welcome lifeline to the outside world. It also allows me to keep up with friends from every era of my life, some that I haven't seen in decades. And sure, a lot of those status updates are completely pointless, but as a bit of a voyeur, I love that peek into the lives of others. Go on, tell me what you had for dinner- I'm game. But my love for the truly human parts of Facebook can only be rivaled by my hatred of the recent tidal wave of impersonal, recycled, generic crap cluttering up my news feed.

I despise the constant reposting of cutesy pictures of mischievous kittens, or life-affirming quotes. An occasional share is fine if it's truly witty or original- I've shared a few of them myself. But 99% of them are completely tired and pointless. And please stop with the accusatory and judgmental, "repost this status unless your to cool to care about ______." Ummm, no, refusing to repost your badly written, grammatically incorrect status does not mean that I don't love God or care about children with cancer, I just don't like to be goaded into reposting spam. And quite frankly, if Jesus wants to visit me, I don't think He'll change His mind if he checks my profile and sees that I didn't repost the picture of Him standing in front of a door on the world's tackiest doormat.

Don't even get me started on the asinine "games" played in the name of cancer awareness. I'm lucky enough to have never lost a family member to cancer. But I have lost friends that I love and respect. And I refuse to trivialize people losing their mothers, wives, and sisters by participating in anything that uses sexual innuendo or trickery in the name of cancer awareness. If you want to try to trick your friends and family into thinking that you're pregnant, or moving out of the country, go ahead, but don't attempt to legitimize it by calling it cancer research, and don't ask me to play along.

That being said, I'm not trying to offend you if you're one of those compulsive re-posters. I still love you, and I still truly want to hear about the things going on in your life. But if your Facebook contributions dwindle to nothing but a puddle of "share" vomit, I'm probably going to hide you. So, come on, folks, help me out here. Restore Facebook to it's former pointless but personal glory! What did you have for lunch?