The King of social media, Facebook is by far the number one choice for networking online. It connects you to friends and family all over the world – and you can share your photos, stories, and your lives with them! So what’s there to hate about Facebook?

I Hate Tagged Photos New notification: Joe Annoying has tagged 17 photos of you. Suddenly, nothing is more important than to check all those 17 photos of yourself to make sure you look good. More importantly, you make sure there are no inappropriate photos showing you downing Tequila shots or wearing that oh-so-short skirt because some of us are silly enough to add clients, coworkers, or even Mom as friends to Facebook! Tagged photos are especially annoying because we cannot fully control them. As a result, the photos we get tagged in may not be the best representation of us and this can be a problem since through Facebook we are presenting to the world our online persona. Thus, drinking at a bar, having a wardrobe malfunction, or taking other unsuitable candid shots may not be how we want to be represented.

Yes, we can now privatize our settings to block our friends from seeing our tagged photos; however, when someone else posts a picture of you it still exists on Facebook for all their “friends” to see, whether you ‘untag’ yourself or ‘limit’ your settings. Even if you don’t have an account, your photo is still there for the world to see. And of course what I hate most is how tagged photos seem to always be the most unflattering pictures of ourselves!

I Hate Unwanted Friend Requests

Do I even KNOW you? You meet someone for one day for only two seconds, and suddenly they are befriending you on Facebook. Okay, fine, this is not totally Facebook’s fault – I mean they are a SOCIAL networking site after all – so at least they give us the option to reject such requests. But what I absolutely hate about Facebook is the ‘Friend Suggestion’ and ‘People You May Know’ features. They actually give you a list of people based on mutual friends, tagged photos, last names, past schools, who knows maybe even same blood types, with whom they think you should be friends! C’mon, if we want to be friends with someone, we don’t need some internet marketing tactic to make us befriend more people! Stop pressuring me Facebook, I can find my own friends!

I Hate Pointless Status Updates.

No one cares if you think your day is absolutely great and that the weather is awesome. We can pretend to care when you post that your boyfriend/girlfriend cheated on you and you feel the need to announce to Facebook that your life sucks… but in all honesty, that’s just pitiful, how do you expect me to ‘like’ that status?! On the other hand, unique and positive status updates are always entertaining, but only in moderation or else they too become pointless. I think there should be a filter on boring status updates or excessive updates in general! Keep it lively people; most of us are ‘creeping’ on Facebook because yes, we are that bored!  

I Hate that Facebook is Stalker-Friendly!

Do you know anyone that logs into Facebook and literally creeps every single status and goes through every single photo of people they barely even know?!? Would you let someone you barely know into your home, to browse through your laptop and photo albums? Basically, Facebook seems to almost support stalking! Not only does Facebook provide the means and space for people to creep profiles, but they make it oh-so-convenient by the constant status updates and newsfeeds! It is almost as if the casualness of our creeping has made it socially acceptable to stalk other people’s profile pages. Yes, we do choose what we want to show as our newsfeed, photos or status updates, and stalking in definition entails getting unwanted attention. So while criminologists can say cyber-stalking, psychologists can argue Facebookers want people to stalk them, hence why we create our profiles in the first place. I just hate that Facebook provides the opportunity to socially stalk someone so easily.
 

I Hate that Facebook is Bait! Regardless of your super duper privacy settings, you WILL get outed on Facebook. It’s just a matter of time if you haven’t. Facebook knows all about you, and has access to all your photos. Even if you are Mr. or Mrs. Paranoid and do not post any personal info, photos, or wall comments, it does not matter. Do you know why? Because SOMEONE ELSE WILL. Your friend’s friend will post a photo of you or your other friend’s friend will comment on a photo of you. Then one day your mom will come up to you and say, “Baba show me this photo of you in a saree beside a darker boy I keep hearing about… an aunty in Scarborough told your aunties in Australia that you are engaged because they saw that photo in a Facebook album titled Engagement” – True story.

I Hate that Facebook is always Changing

A crucial part of social media is to adapt and change according to its time and innovations. It’s just annoying because once we finally get used to one aspect of the Facebook profile, suddenly something new comes out, i.e., Facebook Timeline. I understand that change is good and Facebook is constantly trying to make its privacy settings more feasible and user-friendly for those who prefer not to get an account due to these reasons. Still, change is overwhelming. It doesn’t matter if it’s better, we just can’t be bothered to watch the 2 minute video on how to use the new Facebook!

I Hate that I Love it!

Yes, I hate a lot of things about Facebook, but what I hate most is that I JUST CANNOT get enough of it. I love getting that friend request from someone you wanted to be in touch with, or getting tagged in memorable photos you forgot existed. I love that people ‘like’ my photos, or ‘comment’ on my statuses. I love that I can connect to those I love especially those who live far away. Everyone who has Facebook loves it.

Why do we love it? The ugly truth is because we have narcissistic tendencies.  Straight up: everyone loves attention, and those who say otherwise are just saying that to get more attention. Facebook is basically an outlet where we can brag about ourselves and show off about our lives through photo albums, profile pictures, and status updates. It is actually a space where we normal people can feel like celebrities especially when someone ‘likes’ our photo or approves our statuses - it makes us feel special and important and that's why we love it. We hate to admit it but we love the attention!

- Maria Arasaratnam

- Photo Credit: Gobind Sidhu