Things Social Media Made Me Hate

Before I start, I will remind my dear readers of my tendency to hyperbole. Hate is a strong word. I don't hate these things.  

Also, this post is all meant for fun. I am not here to denigrate your preferences (except for those of you who insist on taking photos of your feet🤮😀).  I am not trying to make some sort of “I’m not like other girls” statement. Of course I am like other girls in many ways. I don’t automatically dislike things merely because they are popular.  I simply bore easily and don’t find repetition of the same concepts enjoyable.

I think this post also deals with the way social media throws the same concepts and images at us and we don’t always realize it. I am the type of person who tends to notice the small things and remembers so much of what I saw in the past. The repetitive nature of social media posts seems to be something I can’t escape from. 

Ever since I first made my tentative steps into online communications (and I am a huge nerd who was babbling via dial-up bulletin boards in the eighties), I have been seeing the same topics come up over and over again. Seemingly harmless everyday pieces of life have been shoved in my face so relentlessly that my annoyance levels are cranked up to maximum volume.  The same joke repeated over and over again ceases to be funny.  The same themes shared in photos becomes redundant and uninteresting. 

I want to scream, "Can't you find something new to post about?" I long for some kind of filter to rid myself of these posts and have more original discussions.  

Maybe it is hate after all.

Anyway, on to the list.

Fall

Recently my mother and I were having a conversation about the florist I used for my wedding.  He did a beautiful job with my flowers.  I told him I wanted my bouquets and centerpieces to evoke "a walk down a country lane on a fall day."  My centerpieces had little decorative gourds in them and my cake table was decorated with more mini gourds and colorful leaves.

Obviously I didn't always hate fall.  I had an October wedding and I fully embraced it.  Then I joined MySpace and eventually Facebook came along.  Everything about the season was in my face all the time.  I prefer the summer with its long days, swimming weather, and delicious produce, so the arrival of fall always made me a bit sad, but I was able to get with the program.  I remember making a post when S&C was on MySpace saying how I was sad to see summer go, but I was off to buy some plaid.

Thanks to social media, fall is no longer a season.  It's a lifestyle brand.  Colored leaves, apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and Halloween decorations are now something one much plaster Instagram with.  There are a hundred memes about sweaters in my feed every day.  I am started to cringe at the word cozy.  The word crisp when it applies to air is the most inane term I ever heard.  Don't even try to wind me up with the pumpkin references.  The internet cliché of the basic white girl who loves fall has turned me off the season completely.  It seems to me people are in love with the idea of fall, the Hallmark movie version of fall.  

Social media have made fall into something it isn't.  Yes, the leaves are pretty and the weather is nice for a few weeks, but November and December (in other words, the bulk of the season) are cold, dead, and dreary.  The desire to participate in "authentic" harvest activities with contrived farm activities has turned the highways into a dystopian hellscape. If I weren’t so sensitive to cold weather, I would almost welcome winter. 

Coffee

Remember what it was like when you were a kid and you smelled coffee and thought it smelled delicious, but then you tasted it and wondered what kind of treasonous bitter poison it was?  I remember those days. 

I liken coffee to vanilla.  The smell of vanilla is divine, but try drinking from a bottle of vanilla extract or eating the contents of a vanilla bean pod.  It only tastes good when you add it to something else.  That's how I learned to like coffee as a child.  Coffee itself tasted awful, but coffee ice cream and other coffee-flavored treats were delicious.  

Coffee as a standalone food is an acquired taste and I have only partially acquired it.  I find the flavor can be mitigated with large amounts of full-fat (or high fat) dairy milk (no substitutions please), but coffee by itself is a cup of diluted mud with varying amounts of battery acid.  

I never wanted to be someone who had a caffeine dependence.  As a young person I saw how adults were so reliant on coffee and tea to feel functional.  American adults seem to live from fix to fix.  It's not even about giving one's nervous system a jolt. It's a full-on addiction where the addict is simply drinking coffee when withdrawal symptoms kick in.  It's a harmless addiction, but to me it's no way to live, so I only drink it in moderation.  The only times I feel I "need" it is when I am driving long distances and don't want to fall asleep at the wheel (a side effect of chronic insomnia, which I will not aggravate with more coffee).

If it weren't for social media, I might feel a bit of pity for coffee addicts, but not rage.  Social media changed all that.  Every day my feed is filled with people talking about coffee.  They show off their coffee mugs.  What bugs me the most is not so much the love of coffee, but the rage against other people.  The memes and mugs all say things like, "Coffee makes me not hate you," or "Coffee keeps me from murdering you," or "Don't talk to me until I have had my coffee." That doesn't make you sound like a coffee lover.  It makes you sound like a sociopath looking for an excuse.  At best it makes you look like a unlikeable misanthrope.  Please drink your coffee if you need it, but shut up about it.  Remember, if you do murder me because you didn't have your coffee, your social media posts are going to implicate you in your trial.

Pictures of People's Feet

Have you ever encountered a person who says she, "hates feet"?  Online and offline I occasionally encounter people who say one of the worst aspects of summer is seeing people walk around in sandals.  Feet are nasty and nobody wants to look at them.

I was never like that.  Feet were merely another body part.  As long as your feet didn't smell, I didn't care one way or another.  Social media changed all that. 

First it was vacation photos.  I don't know who the first person was to say, "I will show I was at the beach by taking a picture of my feet against the background of the ocean," but whoever it is should be tortured for the rest of her life by always having her socks fall down inside her shoes every time she walks.  What is the point? It's not the best evidence of your presence at that exotic (or not so exotic) beach.  Most of your friends and family don't recognize you by your feet.  You should be taking photos of your face.  The lovely landscape is not improved by the appearance of your feet.

Maybe you think it's a cute photographic trick to show the scale of your small feet against a broad background.  I used to do tricks like that in my photography classes.  There are more attractive objects than human feet to achieve that end.  Use a shell or a tote bag or a cocktail.

It has spread from vacation photos to everyday photos.  Instead of a beach, people needed to show they went to the pool by taking photos of their feet at an ordinary swimming pool.  Social media citizens now feel the need to include their feet when their kids are playing in a backyard wading pool.  Why?  I don’t need your feet in the way when I look at photos of your kids.

I am beginning to empathize with the feet haters.  Your feet are not attractive.  I don't want to look at them.

I don't care about your pedicure that you paid for and are showing off.  I have a pedicure of my own.  I can look down and see it whenever I want to.

In fact, if you love the look of your own feet that much, take off your shoes and look down.  Look at your feet all you want.  If you must capture the beauty of your own feet for your own purposes, then take photos and make an album for yourself.  You don't need to share it with the world.

Anyone who enjoys looking at your feet is probably someone you don't want looking at your feet.

Unless you're into that, in which case, I hope you and your fellow foot fetishists find each other and are happy together.  But please keep your kink offline.  

(It is possible I am merely envious of people who are proud enough of their own feet to feel confident enlightened to take photos of them while I am deeply ashamed of my bunions.)

The F Word

I'll bet you know someone on the internet who uses a lot of f-bombs.  That person is uniquely witty for her potty mouth. She is a tough straight talker. She is brutally honest. 

There are a dozen other "unique" women, and a dozen more equally unique men, whose claim to wit and personality is the ability to curse up a storm in every piece of writing.

Fuck used to be the ultimate bad word.  You weren't supposed to use it in polite company.  Now it's merely another colloquialism.  It has become so ubiquitous as a modifier that it has lost its potency.  You're nothing more than another writer who drops a f-bombs.  So what?  Everyone uses it.  It's barely a bad word anymore.  It's overuse by so many people hoping to sound edgy and rebellious, it lost all its teeth.  

Good writers avoid adverbs.  Chances are any verb or adjective that is modified with an adverb can be replaced with a stronger verb or adjective.  That fucking good dinner can be delectable, mouthwatering, scrumptious or ambrosial.  That fucking annoying blogger who tells you how much she hates the stuff you love can be vexatious, irksome, provoking, or aggravating.  

Even worse is that for some people, fuck is nothing more than a vocal crutch like "you know" or "like".  People have to insert fucking before every verb or adjective out of sheer force of habit.  It becomes the first word that pops into someone's head.  

The English language is blessed with multitudinous words to express countless concepts.  Wouldn't it be delightful if more people employed them?