Love them or hate them, social networking sites are here to stay. Facebook and MySpace are among the most popular destinations on the web. And even though they can be extremely annoying, there is one inescapable fact: the most irritating thing about Facebook is the 100m-strong army of people who use it.
When was the last thing you looked at your feed without someone posting an embarrassing picture, or someone else saying something irritating in their status update?
Here are the top 15 things you should never do on Facebook or MySpace:
1. Use Facebook mail instead of proper email
Are you silly? When you Facebook mail me, I have to log into my real email to find that I then have to go and log into my Facebook account to read and reply to your message. If you've got my real email address, please use it.
2. Add old friends and then forget about them
This is the biggest social networking crime of them all. How many times has it happened? You haven't seen someone for 20 years; you vaguely recognise their name but not their face. They add you as a friend on Facebook and then after you accept them, you never hear from them again.
3. Adding people you don't even know
It's one thing to add an old friend and then never speak to them. It's another to add anyone whose name you kind of vaguely sort of recognise. It's like that old man in the pub who slaps everyone on the back as if they were old pals, when in actual fact he has no friends, largely because of this habit.
4. Adding single-serving holiday friends
Some people just don't understand that the exchanging of email addresses at the end of a holiday is just a social ritual and is absolutely not an invitation to add you to Facebook and then turn up unannounced at your house three months later.
5. Accepting friend invitations from people you don't know
It's one thing to complain about irritating people adding you on Facebook, but if you accept those invites, you've only got yourself to blame. If you scan through your Facebook friends list, you'll doubtless find a handful of people in there you barely know. It's a horrible realisation - like when you suddenly realise your hand is resting on a knob of someone else's chewing gum underneath a desk.
6. Update Facebook profile when you're supposedly ill
How many times have we seen it? Someone calls in sick in the morning and then updates their Facebook profile minute-by-minute throughout the day, documenting a day of ice cream, chips, video games and jumping on the bed. Get dressed and get to work you lazy hoodwink, or else you'll probably be fired. And it'd be your own fault for adding your boss to be your Facebook friend.
7. Write on a wall instead of communicating privately
The driving force behind the success of Facebook is... vanity. People love the idea that others are watching what they're doing. Tell me this: for what reason would you invite someone to a private party by writing on their wall, other than to show off to all the people on their friends list who you don't want to come? It just makes you look like a tit, so don't do it.
8. Moan in your Facebook status
The most annoying thing that people do on Facebook is to spray their walls with vanity-filled drivel, by posting self-indulgent awfulness in their status updates. "Kerry is sorry how it ended but it had to be done. I love you and will miss you, and I hope you can apologise one day". Oh sod off. If you've got something to say to someone, say it. Don't post it on your wall because no one else is interested, and people just think you're a prat.
9. Other irritating status updates
No, "Dave is" is not an acceptable status update, nor is it original or in any way clever. "Dave just is..." is equally as inexcusable. And "Dave is Dave is Dave" is downright taking the piss. Oh, and song lyrics are also a no-no. "Sandra was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows she's miserable now" will impress people about the same amount as Morrissey's saggy, miserable face.
10. Upload drunken pictures the morning after
Have a little common sense. If you go out for a big one on a Wednesday night, posting humiliating, drunken photos of your friends on Thursday morning is a recipe for disaster. Because when I call in sick at 9am, the last thing I want my boss to say is: "I've seen the pictures of you crawling in the gutter last night. I'm not amused or impressed, now get to work!"
11. Joining ridiculous chain-mail groups
Why do people insist on joining groups such as "On the X of May, everyone has to panic buy carrots"? Come on people, how stupid are you? There's one group on Facebook devoted to nullifying the vegetarian moral crusade, and it's called: "For every animal you don't eat, I'm going to eat three". That's a good group name. "I think Ryan Seacrest is the best presenter ever" is not.
12. Starting said groups
Enough said.
13. Lazy grammar and spelling mistrakes
Reading Facebook is like perusing a six-year olds' English copybook. Come on, people: 'Your' is 'your'. 'You are' is 'you're'. It really isn't hard to get that little one right. And understanding the difference between there, their and they're surely isn't too much of a challenge?
14. Upload photos to Facebook and deleting originals
Uploading photos to Facebook can be a very handy way of sharing your holiday snaps. But for the love of God, don't lose your originals. Facebook is terrible at compressing and resizing images - it turns your 14MP panoramas into 14KB monstrosities. Facebook is not a suitable repository to store your precious photos!
15. Inviting me to be a Zombie Pirate Snot Monster
Please don't do that ever ever again
Your comments (21) Click to add a new comment
boobob
December 22nd 2010
21. wow... themightyoak and mel... you don't think he made that "mistrake" on purpose? You guys are the definition of idiots.
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ann_t
January 15th 2010
20. i enjoy this list alot.
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ann_t
January 15th 2010
19. 1. There is a way to disable facebook from sending you notifications v.i.a your regular email address.
You can disable all messages entirely. facebook just needs your email address in the same way as your website does. You just have to dig a little deeper to disable them from sending you any spam or unwanted notifications.
That way if someone is annoyingly only messaging you on the book, they wont effect your email in any way whatsoever.
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innerloop
September 4th 2009
18. You are right. I have some points too. If facebook was all about your friends and not the friends of your friends then I would be happy with it. But having complete strangers posting their S%#T in my friends post or status thats something I don't want to know and its really irritating. IMHO myspace is more private than facebook. But for some reason I still use facebook and can't get enough of it lol.
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pumpkin3d
August 13th 2009
17. this sum funny SH@#. ha ha ha ha
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xplode
August 7th 2009
16. anyone that disagrees is a child... hes right.
no one cares how much you love and miss them. and post stupid status updates to get a point across and not alonly that. your doing it publicly. for the attention?
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therevspyro
June 9th 2009
15. OK you're a doiuchebag. In my opinion people can use Facebook any way they want. You don't like it don't use it *******. Yes I get annoyed at Zombies and Pokes and Mafia Wars especially bit overall (aside from the ****** re-design) I like it.
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michellemccormack
December 16th 2008
14. Rarely have I read an opinion post, like this, that I disagree with almost every point made
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adams_tool
September 30th 2008
13. friends take on a whole new meaning on facebook.
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jak119
September 27th 2008
12. You took the words right out of my mouth.
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sparklyminx
September 26th 2008
11. I agree with most of these, but LAY OFFA Morrissey! He is hotter at age 50 than you are now at 25 or whatever most of you ridiculously young FB users are.
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benjom1ne
September 26th 2008
10. All the things you listed are almost as sad as taking your time to make such a terrible list
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stewsofdoom
September 26th 2008
9. You ARE kidding, aren't you theejoshman?
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theejoshman
September 26th 2008
8. Facebook? You mean people actually use that? Why when there is MySpace.
Jiff
www.privacy.es.tc
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themightyoak
September 26th 2008
7. Ha ha. Brilliant. If you're going to question grammar then please get your own right, James. I think you'll find it's a "a six-year old's English copybook". D'oh!
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zeat
September 26th 2008
6. 16. Stop using the status to tell me about your little brat. "Sharon is... excited that little Johnny is going to school today", "Sharon is... loving little Johnny's new haircut". Who the f*** cares!?
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mel
September 26th 2008
5. I see you made a mistake with your mistake in no. 13
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blueskyy
September 26th 2008
4. No more facebook for me!...... The last thing I need is to have people I hardly know request site links to me, only to then spam me with **** about how long they waited for some bus somewhere... how they just squeezed a pimple.. how they just finished feeding the baby.. how they basically don't have a life! sorry... my time is way too precious to have to wade through facebook Bluurrr!!...
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jsmith1984
September 26th 2008
3. "Booty," you're probably too young to use Facebook and definitely to immature. Rivington has valid points about how people misuse the site.
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