Karl Klockars

As someone who derides and ridicules Myspace at every possible occasion, it pains me to admit that Facebook has its hooks in me.  I don’ t know why I should care about everything that someone’s boyfriend that I met three years ago continues to do every five minutes, but I keep going back to that Facebook trough again and again.

I’m trapped.  No way around it.  So I suppose I might as well learn to appreciate it, right?  I can see how crazy some old friends have become (including a full-on “I’m just asking questions!” 9/11 Truther posting links to PrisonPlanet), how some grade school acquaintances have grown up and traveled the world and married and spawned, how some people I barely know are dealing with their days at work and how great Disney World is from that same boyfriend that just updated their status again.

So in order to assist everyone that keeps joining the Cult of the Book of the Face day by day, I’ve put together this handy list.  Call it:

People You Shouldn’t Ever Be, In Terms Of How You Conduct Yourself On Social Networking Sites OR: How To Be A Better Citizen Of The Internets.

Just follow these handy rules!

1)  Once a day.

It’s okay to look more than a few times a day, because I can’t condemn anyone for doing what I do myself.  But unless you’ve won a Major Award or you just got hit by a bus and you feel the need to Twitter as your life’s blood spills out beneath you, we don’t need updates every damn hour.

Going to lunch?  Unless you’re inviting me along, I don’t care.  Feeling stressed at work?  I’m sorry.  Still feeling stressed ten minutes later?  Now I’m sorry that you’re now stressing me out, jerk.  Know your boundaries, which leads me to….

2)  Not that much.

Now that we’ve decided that you’re only going to be updating that status once (okay, maybe twice) a day or so, the next step is to know exactly where to stop.  Got a new puppydog?  Awesome!  Feel like letting me know, exactly and in graphic detail, how disgusting the process of housebreaking that cute little puppy is?  No thank you.

3)  You’re not as clever as you think you are.

Sometimes thoughts will enter your head.  And then you should think to yourself:  How would this sound coming out of Dane Cook?  If you think it might ever be something he might say, you don’t need to post it as a note, a picture, a status update, a Wall-To-Wall, a poke, a nothing.

I have one guy on my friends list who seems to think he’s the next (insert name of current “hot” comedian here) ___________ and sees fit to update the world with his crackling wit and his undying creativity.  Unfortunately, they’re all cribbed from Carlin routines from 8 years ago (“I have a place for all my stuff!”) or they’re just punchlines to jokes of a borderline ethnic background.

The subquestion you may be asking yourself at this point is:  Why do you continue to put up with these people?  Answer:  I don’t have a damned clue, but I’m apparently some sort of emotional masochist.  Onward.

4)  Not everything is political.

If you can take every tiny little status update from every one of your friends and twist what they say into some kind of petty little slap at the political party you oppose, I hate you with the burning fire of a thousand suns.  You are accomplishing nothing, you are expending energy into the universe that you will never get back, you are wasting seconds of your life that you can’t cash in later, and no one you know thinks that you’re fighting for the cause in a way that couldn’t be taken care of with a postal sticker on a lamppost.  I hate you I hate you I hate you.  Even if I agree with you.

SomeGuyA: “SomeGuyA is really enjoying the new record by Flavor Of The Month!”

SomeGuyB: “And I’m enjoying the record that they’re going to put your Governor behind jail with!  Democrats are all the same!”

If I had that compressed-air bolt thing that Anton Chigurh had in No Country for Old Men, I would put that thing to your digital forehead so fast you’d be lying on the shoulder of the Facebook Highway before you knew anything had happened.

5)  I don’t give a shit about your blog.

Okay, I’m guilty of this one:  I have personally posted items from this here hunk of internets onto my Facebook page.  But:  It’s only stuff that I think other people might be interested.  A voice from the Peanut Gallery:  “Isn’t that the definition of blog?  That everyone is interested in every little miniscule piece of crap occurence in your life?” Well, okay, yes.  But I do have a small voice of self-editing inside of me.

Look, we know where it is.  We’ll find it if we want.  A guy once told me, “There are plenty of unknown geniuses out there, but there are no unknown marketers.”  And that’s true.  But it’s a fine line between “marketing your website” and “being like those guys that wrote the HeadOn commercial.”

HeadOn.  Apply directly to the forehead.  Here’s my blog here’s my blog here’s my blog.  Capice?  As I look through my Posted Items, I’ve done it twice.  I have been doing this since 2005.  That’s about an appropriate rate to post stuff.  Follow my lead.

Hopefully, these few rules (which I reserve the right to amend at any time) will help you and all new members of this Cult of the Book of the Face.  (It’s kinda like Manos – The Hands of Fate.  Sorta.)  Go now in peace, to love and serve the Facebook.  Trespass upon no one else’s home page or Status Updates list, and post no photos that could get anyone fired.  Unless you’re in college.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go post this to my Facebook page.