5 Social Media Pet Peeves

Social media is slowly shaping our culture around the world and, whether you know it or not, chances are you are a part of that. From Facebook to Myspace, Digg to Reddit – everyone that spends any kind of time on the web will find themselves involved with some sort of social activity. That said, there are some people that will find a way to crawl under your skin. Here are 5 pet peeves that you may find in social media.

The Digg Commenter Who Thinks He Is The Submission Police

Digg is a huge social media content aggregator, it fuels the masses with ‘front page’ stories that reach a huge audience. Once a story hits the font page it may not last there but only a few hours. Most of the ‘casual’ Digg readers will not take the time to surf through very many pages to see something they have missed. That said, it would be easy for a story to hit the front page and someone still miss it. So please Mr. Digg submission policeman, we don’t need your comment letting us know that the story has already made the front page, that is unless it is on the front page at the time of your posting. I’ve seen the same story from multiple sites hit front page three or four times, let’s let everyone get their shot at seeing it.

All The Foursquare People That Are Adding Their Homes As ‘Venues’

Foursquare is still relatively new in the ‘social’ side of the web. It is a new way of connecting with people in your local community. It sounds stupid at first, but once you start checking in and getting badges it actually starts to get a little addicting. I’ve actually met people in my area because of Foursquare that I can honestly say I would probably have never meet otherwise. What I don’t like is pulling out my phone and trying to check in at Walmart only to see 15 venues titled “The Smith Household’ or ‘ Da Crib’. Hey dip shit, we don’t care that you are home and we don’t want that shit littering our check in scan. Please stop adding stupid shit as venues on Foursquare.

Over Sharing On Facebook, aka: Too Much Information!

Let’s not kid ourselves here – everyone in the world knows what Facebook is. Even if you choose not to participate you know it’s there. Facebook can be a great way to reconnect with childhood friends, stay connected with family members, or to just meet new friends. It gets out of control and sometimes funny when someone that is new comes along and decides it is their place to lay it all out. I don’t care about your marital problems, your rectal bleeding, or the fact that you can’t find a woman. There is a place for that shit, and maybe even someone that wants to hear it, but I don’t so please leave it off Facebook. The sad fact here is that most of these oversharers do it out of stupidity, not knowing that everyone can actually see it.

There Are TMI People On Twitter Too!

Twitter, like Facebook, is a great tool for getting real time information and news. If the right people are followed it can be very entertaining and sometimes rewarding. When the wrong people are followed, however, it can be down right annoying. Some people join Twitter and have absolutely nothing to add, they feel their huge contribution is to let everyone know they are driving to work, taking a shit, or cooking dinner. Little do they know that the 12 people following them don’t give a shit. Sadly, there is not an ‘ignore’ function on Twitter so if you decide to follow a friend or relative be prepared to get bombarded with useless drivel.

Reddit Could Be The Greatest Thing Ever! If Only I Could Submit A Link There

Reddit is another huge social media content aggregator. It works in a way that caters content to specific people (people that ‘subscribe’ to a category or ‘sub reddit’). What that means is if a story is huge in the Politics sub reddit but I’m not subscribed to it, then I may never see it. Which is awesome! It really allows the users to only see what they are actually interested in. Where it goes bad, however, is the efforts the site goes through to keep ‘spam’ out of the system. Keeping spam out is not a bad thing, but it is so bad on Reddit that unless a site is ‘white listed’ it is damn near impossible to actually get it’s content seen. Even when you think you have submitted something you may not have even made it past the ‘spam filter’. For the casual user this may mean that you have zero chance of sharing content. Add that to the fact that you may be the proud owner of a banned account and not ever know it. 404 error anyone? (tip: go to your account page and while there log out…you may be surprised!)

This wasn’t meant to be a bitch or bash session; I love all of the sites listed above. But, anyone that spends any extended amount of time on any of them could probably relate. I mentioned Myspace in the beginning, but decided that if you still use it then that would be the biggest pet peeve of all.