Sanity Check: The Twit-Tard and Other Interweb Morons

Hello to you, my dear hyper-cephalized companions, and welcome to another Sanity Check on TPP.  It's that time of the week again; time for me to save you some of those precious IQ points.

This week's subject: The Twit-Tard and Other Interweb Morons



The Insanity:
If you're reading this blog, odds are you are not like my dad, and I do not need to teach you how to copy and paste.  ...Nor do I have to inform you that hitting the "print" button 11 consecutive times will not, in fact, make the print-job proceed any faster.  You do, however, probably have a Facebook, Twitter, or--God forbid--Myspace.  In short, you probably have some website that you login to in order to have quick access to a way that you may live vicariously through your friends. 

<---Give her a penis, and you pretty much have every single interaction my dad has with any piece of technology.  Now, I'm not trying to discount social networking sites as a bad thing by any means.  Hell, I know without my Facebook, I wouldn't ever know when my film group is having shoots, when my friends are getting together, or when my favorite bands are having concerts!  Social websites are AWESOME for keeping up with friends living in different states or even different countries; Facebook was my lifeline when I was the only one from my town attending my university.  There are, however, certain types of people who abuse these sites and thus annoy their friends to no end in the process. 

The Twit-Tard: The funny thing about the Twit-Tard is that its natural habitat is not necessarily exclusive to Twitter.com.  In fact, I see Twit-Tards all over Facebook and Foursquare all the time.  These are the people who update their status or feed seemingly every 30 seconds with every little intimate detail of our lives.  Prime example:

"Mai kn3w cUp!1!"

These people have somehow gotten it in their heads that every event of their waking lives must be archived in these sacred social networking sites, and if a single occurrence is missed, they will surely never be remembered and die on the spot.  That's the only explanation.

Internet Break-Ups: We've all seen one of these go down, and a few of us have had the unfortunate experience of falling victim to one of them.  The sad truth about the proliferation of social networking is that it makes boyfriends and girlfriends alike rather paranoid.  I mean, the thought of someone I'm dating (who I'm not very close to) having a bunch of single desperate women/men at their fingertips really makes me worry.  Sooner or later, one thinks the other is cheating on them, and they have the most epic battle ever recorded in the land of Passiva Aggressiva for all to see.  And we all know that an ellipse on its own is quite possibly the worst form of insult ever.  A solitary "..." screams "FUCK YOU, YOU MOTHER-FUCKING ASSHOLE.  I HATE YOU AND WANT YOU TO BURN IN HELL."  Worse still is when people actually skip the whole ellipse thing and seem to get their caps-locked stuck.  No one wins the argument, and both parties end up posting ambiguous statuses somewhere along the lines of "FML" or "This is fucking stupid.  Why do I even bother?" or some sad song lyric.

I mean, need I say more?

Facebook PDA: This is the complete opposite of the interweb moron above.  You've seen these people.  It's the girls who post a huge string of hearts on their boyfriend's wall.  They post statuses that have "I love him so much" or "My day would be so much better if he logged on <33333" or some shit.  Worst yet, is when you have a hybrid of the Twit-tard and Facebook PDA, in which EVERY SINGLE UPDATE will have something about their significant other.  "Going to buy milk with *insert bf/gf here*"..."Damn, *insert bf/gf* and I had to buy 2% cuz they're out of whole milk".  You get my drift by now, I'm sure.  At the most extreme, Facebook PDA-ers end up in a pseudo-argument about who "loves" the other more, and it all culminates into this horrible gooey ball of sweet-nothings that must be coated in sugar candy-hearts and cliche'd romance films.

Shooting the (Instant) Messenger: These guys are the reason why I don't ever get on chats.  It's that friend or person you barely know who constantly greets you on IM with "Hey, what's up?"  You reply "nothing", they reply "nothing", and you're stuck in an endless loop of small-talk driven only by your strict adherence to social media conduct.  Even worse is the fact that you really never know when the conversation is dead.  They might reply "Yeah...", you won't reply anything for all of 3 minutes, and they'll be like "Dude, are you still there?" as if they had just fucking laid out their grand scheme to go with you to steal every ounce of cocaine from Mexico in a night or something.

Cyber-Therapists: Despite popular culture putting these guys in the ground, the emo kids are still out there in force.  I don't know WHO told them this would work, but I see all sorts of statuses that are huge cries for help.  We all have that friend who we really don't know why we keep them around, since every single status update is something about "their heart bleeding black tears".  ...Let's be honest here; we keep them as friends because we're a little afraid that if we un-friend them, they might kill themselves.  We don't want that blood on our hands, even if it is over cyber-space.  Red pixels, after all, are pretty damn incriminating evidence.

The Sanity Check:
First and foremost, Twit-tards, WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE.  Oh my god.  I like being around you in person, but JESUS, I do not need to know if you're in the shower or taking a nap or eating a sandwich or anything like that.  If you have something interesting or exciting to say, by all means post a status, but if you're going to be boring as shit, please keep your uneventful life to yourself.  Posting it on Facebook or Twitter does not magically harness the power of that new-fangled "interweb tehchnology" to suddenly make you hip and jive like all those other cool-cats, trust me.

Secondly, if you are fighting over Facebook or--God forbid--IM, you need to man the fuck up and get your baggage off of your social networking sites.  We a) really don't care if he's ignoring you or looked at a girl at a party, b) think you're REALLY IMMATURE for having this disagreement on the internet, and c) will not be surprised to see your relationship fail if you choose to continue.  If you want a successful relationship, take your communication offline and have a heart-to-fucking-heart.  All this passive aggressive text bullshit will only make it worse.  And people will hate you.  I will, at least.

Thirdly, if your relationship is going well, great.  Let's not brag about it.  You're making all those single people out there feel bad, and you're annoying the shit out of people like me by giving those of us in a committed relationship a bad name.  After like...a year...NO ONE CARES how long you've been together.  After a year, "18 months" and "15 months" are the exact same fucking amount of time in cyber-land, which is "a fucking long-ass time".  We get it.  You're proud and whatever, but your anniversaries should be something you and your partner share together.  The public doesn't need to know unless, perhaps, he gets down on a knee and decides to put a ring on it.  Then I want to hear something from my single ladies.

But if he does this, please don't be like this stupid bitch and say "no" right away.

Fourthly, if you don't have a reason to talk to me, I don't want to talk to you.  Stop wasting my time.  End of story.

Lastly, I don't know who told all you emo kids that announcing your horrible life to the world would somehow prompt the cyber-gods to come down and rain their blessings upon you, but someone greatly misinformed you.  All those melodramatic, passive-aggressive status updates with sad song lyrics only make us wonder a) what's wrong with you, b) why you haven't sought help, and c) why you're so god damned persistent about how depressed you are when you posted something about unicorns and puppies an hour ago.  If you really need help, you need to fucking ask for it; that's the only way anyone will ever give you what you want.  If you are going to continue doing this shit, all you're going to do is invite snarky replies like this from people like me:

In short, social networking is both a blessing and a curse.  I'd like the general public to keep it the former, so let's not be retards online, capiche?

Next week's subject: "Mac Mania" and how Steve Jobs owns your ass.


That's all folks!  Tune in tomorrow for a new edition of "Inn Perspective"!

Until next time, dweebs <3