sometimes things like Facebook timeline roll out and make me feel dated, because I can remember all the different phases that Facebook has gone through since I started using it in college (remember the fuss news feed caused?) and how old that makes me compared to some of the middle schoolers who are on Facebook these days.
as the years go by, how I spend my time online has changed. when we first got a computer at home, I spent hours on AIM and filling out email tags to forward to everyone – as if anyone really needed to know what color socks I was wearing at the moment. thankfully, the email tag phase eventually ended, but the AIM phase lasted through many different screen names and even into college, when I discovered iChat on my mac and used it to talk to mariah all day at the daily cougar for the times when I was too lazy to walk from my desk to production. now it’s grown to include gchat and twitter, and I can hardly remember a world before texts.
with every new phase though, I’ve discovered a new set of things people do online that annoy me. over time they’ve grown to match the various forms of online/digital communication into a list of things I refer to as my digital pet peeves – different from my normal ones, like not putting your shopping cart back. so in chronological order, here goes:
AIM: I wasn’t a huge fan of the standard color scheme – black text on white background – but what I hated the most was the pairing of that with blue and red for the screen names of the people in the chat. and the default use of times new roman. and mostly, when people left it that way, since I was one of those who spent hours coordinating background and text colors and trying out various fonts and changing it immediately if anyone had the same combination as me. I know – what a diva. tell that to cantongurl1711 (note the purposeful misspelling and locker number, haha!) or starbabee121 (again with the misspelling) or littlezo5 (the letter “o” not the number, because someone else took that before I could get to it).
Facebook: back in the day, status updates appeared right next to your name, so it looked like one continuous sentence. therefore, it annoyed me when people didn’t start their sentences with a verb and would post things like “jane who has tickets to the BSB concert tomorrow?” I always made sure to structure mine correctly, as in “jane needs to know who has tickets to the BSB concert tomorrow.” it reads so much better and makes so much more sense. now, since the status updates moved to underneath your name, this doesn’t bother me so much. instead, now I get mad when people don’t have a profile picture, because I caved and got a smart phone (I still really miss T9 and physical keyboards) and synced everyone’s facebook pic to their number instead of having to take 100 individual pics like I did back in the day. but if you don’t have a pic, it just stays blank and it forces me to use some stock photo of a flower or some rocks instead of your pretty face showing up when you call. see? so sad. get a picture.
Twitter: I can cover this in one word – hashtags. why do you hashtag things that no one else will? why do you hashtag things that aren’t funny? why do you hashtag complete paragraphs, as #ifputtingfourteenwordstogetherwithoutspacesmakesmewanttoreadyourtweet? and also, instagram. I know I may be in the minority here, but I feel like instagram makes it harder for me to actually see what is in the picture, since it is all sepia-toned and soft-focused and whatnot.
I realize this rambly post is dating me even more, like I’m sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch watching the sunset and telling all the kids how things were back in the day. today is nice, though, so I actually may go outside in a while. if the sky is nice maybe I’ll even twitpic (not instagram) it for you later. ;)
