It’s time, readers. Following Facebook’s latest round of formatting changes, I decided it was time to once again take a look at everyone’s favorite reluctant addiction and strike a blow for our collective sanity.

There are some new faces in the neighborhood since our last post on the matter, having avoided detection in the first years of the Facebook boom. Growing tired of lurking in the shadows, these nasty little habits have grown quite menacing, threatening the future of Facebook and proving yet again that pure democracy breeds pure chaos.

Let’s have a look.

1. Ye Olde “Your Status is the Predicate, You Are Already the Subject” Predicament

Facebook finally canned the addition of the intransitive verb is as a status prefix, but unfortunately it seems that some still don’t quite grasp the concept that their name, to any interested onlookers, will precede their status message.

“Jill Greene I think Jason is an idiot! TEAM MELISSA!!!!!”
“Keith Morgenstern this damn burritoe tastes funy”
“Nicole Bumgardner Going on a cruuuuuuise!”

Folks. It only takes a second. Think about what you’re saying. You probably don’t leave the house without zipping up your pants and scraping the dried toothpaste from your cheek – why would you purposefully make yourself sound like a meth addict?

2. Note-Nazis

This is without a doubt my least-favorite and worst offender in Facebookdom, turning anyone and their narcissism into gigantic, annoying bullies. Facebook Notes + a pandemic of “25 Random Things About Me” declarations = madness. It all seemed so innocent. The idea is simple: Write a note completely about yourself, and then tag everyone you care to harass in the note. You don’t do this because the person tagged is actually referenced in the note (a preposterous notion); you do it just to force it onto their Walls, and News Feeds.

3. Photo-Fascists

Idocicy is incestuous and always seems to breed within itself. Someone (whoever you are, you’d better hide and never come out) created a graphic with a bunch of little cartoon characters on it in a grid, and decided to tag all the little faces with their friends names. Pretty soon, hundreds of these little time-wasters hijacked my entire News Feed, rendering Facebook’s benefits completely useless and instead reminding me that we’re all the same, and we’re all a little sad.

4. Wall-to-Wall Stupidity

This is a perennial problem. Some people, instead of making a quick phone call or sending a private email, decide to make plans via Wall-to-Wall conversations. This was Facebook’s way of letting us all in your conversation, and with that in mind, I’d just like to say thank you for making me care about when you and your friend are meeting for dinner tonight. I’ll just sit here at home and eat cheese, thanks.

5. So Many Twits

Separation of church and state has nothing on my desire to see a separation of Facebook and Twitter. Twitter, the all-time undisputed champion of brevity and lost intelligence, has now turned people’s names into cryptic handles again. I think back to all the effort it took to dig ourselves out of the AOL Instant Messenger madness of the new millenium, resorting to really fun and easy-to-digest names like “IcePrincess23456” and “NYYankees_3_Peat.” Soon, applications became more sophisticated and we found new ways to return to our true selves. There was a nice period there where referred to one another by our actual names, but we’ve slipped off the wagon again. Nomenclatural gems like @frankypoo and @highlifebaby are permeating already inane status messages like -

“Ken Morrison meetin’ my boys @moosepants, @warhorse7, and @ilovehooters for some shotz!!”

- and forever validating what can only be described as horrific writing (and life) skills.

6. The “I Hate Facebook” Facebook Crowd

These are the bloodthirsty cannibals of Facebook, the ones who use Facebook all the time and no matter what positive changes and natural technological evolutions occur, decide to seethe and spit, biting the hand that freely feeds them and letting us all know (because, you know, we wanted so much to hear from them) how much “the new Facebook sucks!!” I imagine these are the types of people that love to lament things in general, hating change for the sake of change, having grown so accustomed to their knee-jerk electronic habits that they can’t fathom the fact that they weren’t consulted about these obviously demonic changes taking place without their permission.

7. You’re Newly Married, We’re All Extremely Happy For You

The last time out, I wrote about new families. This time, it’s newly married couples. These are well-meaning women, by and large so excited and thrilled to be experiencing what they’ve been waiting for since the days of Ken and Barbie that they decide to let us in on their diary-like mania surrounding every detail of the big day, from engagement to honeymoon.

“Sophie Jenkins 184 DAYS UNTIL THE BIG DAY!!!!”
“Clarissa Maxwell MRS. JIMMY NOTZON, BIZNATCHES!!!!”
“Deborah Lawson At IKEA with the hubby, picking out our NEW bed! I MISS COSTA RICA!!!”

Ugh.

8. “The More You Update, the Sadder You Seem” Paradigm

This is a very simple equation. There’s a directly proportional relationship between the number of status updates one makes in a 24-hour period, and their perceived level of loserishness.

“Sally Jessup is ready for the weekend.” 3:14pm
“Sally Jessup is about ready to peace ouuuutta herrrre…” 4:35pm
“Sally Jessup is thinkin‘ burritos and ‘ritas at Los Pacos!!” 5:15pm
“Sally Jessup HATES TRAFFIC!!!” 5:47pm
“Sally Jessup is about to see what the bottom of the El Presidente looks like” 6:02pm
“Sally Jessup hates Jeremy our mean waiter and his ugly tats” 7:43pm
“Sally Jessup I can’t feel my lips.” 8:55pm
“Sally Jessup Who thoght that shots wer a gud idea?” 9:48pm
“Sally Jessup dsflsko%!!rhf” 10:25pm
“Sally Jessup is so over it. i have no words.” 12:23am

* * *

So that’s it for now, folks. I’m sure We’ll be back again in a few months, addressing new violations and trying our best to keep the level of quality communication at its highest level. Just remember, in the universe of verbiage, you are what you say.