Thursday, January 22, 2009

Immature Poets are writing hastily.

Welcome to this written-entirely-during-my-lunch-break edition of Immature Poets (For previous, hilarious editions check our archives. If you can’t locate them, rest assured: the problem is with you. Become more tech savvy.)

At any rate, the reason we at Immature Poets are eating our nuked leftover pasta while composing this instead of our other favorite lunch break hobby (googling stuff) is you. We do it all for you, dear reader, to make your life better. Today’s life-bettering post addresses the important issue of the pain-stakingly composed Facebook status update.

Gone are the days when the only way to express passive aggression online was through emoticom filled angsty livejournal posts. Thanks to an ever-evolving Facebook, you can express dissatisfaction with your life/ex/investment portfolio in the blink of an eye! However, with great efficiency comes great responsibility. Don’t fall into the trap of overusing the power and having later cries of “Hector Hobbs is HATES everyone” lose their punch and fall on apathetic ears. Here are a couple of tips and guidelines to make sure every time you update your friends, loved ones, and random people you don’t really know but for some reason friended on your current state of being—that you do so with the utmost poise and conviction.

--Make things as vague as possible. This will seriously increase the intrigue and thus the number of comments your status earns. No one has any need to respond to a clear-cut: “Pajama Booth is sad after being dumped by my boyfriend, Seth” or “Jesus Van Buren ate 7 pizzas. Can you believe that?!!! No, these are the straightforward statuses of amateurs. A clever Facebooker knows a more alluring status would be: “Chad Sparrows is your grandfather” or “Marcy Cutler is NOT at fault. It’s public decency laws that are too constraining” or (and this only for the truly adept) “Jorge Meadows is…”

--Never use real names. This adds to the vagueness as mentioned in dashed point one, but also gives plausible deniability. Compare the following: “Gordon Hatfield thinks Lacey is a dirty whore who will die of venereal disease” and “Gordon Hatfield thinks someone is a dirty whore who will die of venereal disease.” In the latter, Gordon has some wiggle room should those rumors about Lacey prove false—and they may be able to rekindle a romance without worry about spreading infection. In the former, not so much.

--Don’t be afraid to get a little creative. Make up words as needed! “No one likes a grammar Nazi” is something we here at Immature Poets are fond of saying.

---This final dashed point if the most important (hence the added dash for emphasis): think twice before putting up any Facebook status. If you’ve been drinking or are under the influence of illegal substances, go ahead and think it through three or four times. Remember that things that seem vitally important in the heat of righteous indignation may become more of a stain of embarrassment when your best friend’s mom who friended you a few days ago sends you a kindly meant Facebook message suggesting you get counseling.

Hopefully you’ve found this helpful, dear reader. Now I have to go wash my Tupperware and return to the job at hand. Happy Facebooking!

1 comment:

  1. http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

    --The Mighty M

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