Just Stop

A friend of mine is just losing it on Facebook. Here's the thing: I really don't think she has any idea that she is. She is "living out loud" and making sure her "friends" get multiple angles of her dirty laundry.

I know she doesn't read this blog, but if she happens to maybe this will wake her up. Facebook is basically an information-sharing service as I've noted before, and posting amounts to broadcasting to subscribers (a more accurate word than friends.) This person has over 200 such and, unless I'm very much mistaken, she is imprudent to be sharing such information with at least half of them. Possibly most of them, at least those who make a lot of the comments to her dirty laundry posts which have the most commentary by far on her page.

She basically has two ex-husbands at this point, although I'm not sure she has formally ended her relationship with the current one. Recently he has been found guilty of a crime involving a female who is a minor, hence the breakup. It was painful to read her posts about this on Facebook. Wouldn't it have been better to send private emails if she really felt she must keep people informed of developments? By the way, my description is purposely vague and censored, but I'll say no more. Her posts are far more graphic than the newspaper stories and yes, there were newspaper stories.

Now she has let go with a rant about a horrible thing her first husband told her children to characterize her. This is basically like handing the football to the other team. Now everybody who is a friend/subscriber gets to be splattered with the grime of his boorishness. Everybody at her page already knows he's a loser if they know her, so why do this? Does she want attention? She's blasting this out to 200+ people, some of whom are children from the look of the pictures. When they see her at church or at family gatherings or on the street what are they going to think? "There's the lady whose life is like the soaps."

She needs to just stop.

I like what Kathleen said in response to the piece I linked earlier with regard to self-censorship, which is basically what I want her to begin engaging in. "It's a bit like abstinence -- self-censorship is the most reliable form of privacy. and actually Facebook presents an excellent means of teaching this skill." Well, people who know me know that I'm all for self-governance. But I believe people know not what they do, so I keep putting these posts out like cigarette warning labels.

(Yeah, I'm mixing topics here, but that's a choice cartoon, is it not? Source.)