Erin the Spy: Part Deux

From thefrisky.com

A few months shy of a year ago, I wrote a post about my observations about human nature.  My unwitting test subjects were my Facebook friends, as well as myself.  The evidence of my study was in the form of the Facebook Status Update, a term today's social network users throw around without a second thought that there might still be some people in America who don't know what that means.  For those who don't know, it most often takes the form of a one to three sentence summary of what the Facebook account user is doing or thinking at that moment.  To summarize my original research results, I studied the content of said status updates, scouring for patterns in the human psyche.  My original findings, which can be reviewed here, were met with critical acclaim.  The research was far from over, though.  For the subsequent months since the initial publication of my research, I have been diligently at it, continuing to uncover the best, and sometimes worst, of human tendencies, compulsions, and obsessions as shared by Facebook users themselves.  Remember that to be included as a summation of the human social psyche, the behavior had to be observed at least a dozen times.  Also, the exhibits with an asterisk next to them means that I have written a status update that has put me in that category. So on to Part 2 of Erin the Spy:


Exhibit M:  The Friend Whore -  These Facebook users have more friends than one person could ever possibly know in person, and their status feed's tell us daily the dozens of new people they have added to their online party.  It is also common for these people to let you know via status update that you have just made the cut of people to still be their friend, as they have just completed some unwanted-friend housekeeping by deleting those unfortunate enough to be, well, no longer friends with Exhibit M.  If you're like me, your first response is one of relief that you weren't dumped.  If you're like me, your second response is usually the question of when did WE last communicate, and therefore what did I do to deserve making the cut?

Exhibit N:  The Letter Writer (a)*- This person writes letters to inanimate forces or situations such as the weather, jobs or illnesses, and followed the lead of The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love":  "Dear Cold, please bother someone else" or "Sunshine, oh how I've missed you."  This is personification at its best.

Exhibit O:  The Letter Writer (b)* - This is the twin sister to The Letter Writer (a).  This person updates her status by writing letters to people we all know will never see or read the status update - her fetus, her baby, his congressman, his crazy neighbor. Often passive aggressiveness at its best.

Exhibit P:  The Romantic - She just cannot keep from telling us how much she loves her husband, how she can't wait for her husband to get home, how her husband is the best there ever was...I'm not talking about the special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries where you would naturally want to give a special shout-out, rather multiple times a week.  While these updates may come from a sincere and sweet place, those of us that are bitter and lonely can't help but wonder just what will happen when the honeymoon is over, what it is she is trying to hide from all of us - or better yet, what she is hiding from herself.

Exhibit Q:  The Ain't It The Truth'er* (*=I hope) - I know I can't help but liking this persons status updates because, honestly, he writes the funniest, most truthful moments-that-we-all-experience-but-nobody's-ever-vocalized-it-in-quite-that-way comments.  As long as he steers clear of discussing politics, religion, or bowel movements, this person will frequently be rewarded with many thumbs turned way up.

Exhibit R:  The Word Extenders - These people, in order to visually express an oral experience, extend words by adding extra consonants, or more frequently vowels, to add emphasis to a word; Puuuuuuulease; Longggggg day; heyyyyyyyyyy, and the ones I love to hate - Timeeeee and Loveeeeeeeeeee.  Unfortunately, they usually put the wrong emphASS-is on the wrong syl-Aaaahhble, and by adding extra E's to the end of words, they unwittingly change the pronunciation of the word entirely by changing them from silent vowels to ones very much with an attached sound...please tell me that you readers out there mentally pronounce loveeeeeeeee differently than loooooooove like I do.

Exhibit S:  The Tuck Ya In'ners- These people are on Facebook enough that they have taken it upon themselves to tell us all it is waaaaaaay (or should it be wayyyyyy?) past our bedtimes with a friendly, "Good night Facebook!"

Exhibit T:  The Baby Obsessed - Exhibit T is mad up mostly of my former students who are quite young and quite pregnant.  Simply being a mother does not make you part of this exhibit, and neither does being a specimen of Exhibit G (see previous study).  These girls (I hated it when I was called 'girl' at 18 and 19, but I'm old enough now that I've earned the right...besides the fact that I now know they actually still are girls) take pictures of themselves in bikini's  and booty shorts showing off their pregnant bellies, but usually are so little to begin with that it looks like they had a big meal and have done their best to fill their stomachs with air, pushing out with all their might.  They've also added fetus time counters and named their baby with designer first and middle name combo's and write her messages though she is only the size of a hair follicle.

Exhibit U:  The Got-Yer-Back'ers* - Submitted by Tasha.  These people got 'yer  back mostly because they are literally on it - they comment or 'like' your status updates within minutes or seconds of hitting "Share" which begs the question, why are they always on Facebook?

Exhibit V:  The Activist* - Politics is life.  This status updater will sometimes encroach on the territory of The Letter Writer (b) and even dabble in the Ain't It the Truther, but The Activist takes his comments to a whole new level.  His updates are often accompanied by links to online news articles and John Stewart's The Daily Show video clips.  WARNING:  Be careful to give The Activist a wide girth when commenting to the opposite persuasion. Unless, that is, you are ready and willing for a verbal lashing of the third degree!

Exhibit W:  The Epic Journaler - Submitted by Claudia.  These people give a running tally of everything they've done all day.  They aren't the same people that tell you about their bowel movements, but everything else is fair game.

Exhibit X:  The Busy Bee'ers - Between the second it takes us to read their update about how busy their day has been or how busy it's going to be, and the second we then question why the hell they are on Facebook if life is that chaotic, we have judged them.  Conclusions as to whether Exhibit W and Exhibit X are in fact part of the same genus, species, and kingdom are still underway.

Exhibit Y:  The Event Planners - They invite you - and by 'you' I mean all of us reading their update -  to stuff, tell you to meet them somewhere, or are bored and give a shoutout to whoever might want to get something going.  They always ask us to call them though, don't they?

Exhibit Z:  The It's So Cute You Think We Give a Damn'ers - Who to blame...cell phones or their owners?  These updaters tell us which restaurants or clinics or bars or airports they are at at that very second.  There is a convenient little link (so is it the GPS in some cell phones that does this? Is it automatically done?  Or does the updater have to manually like and link the location for it to then link it for all of us readers out there?) to the location so we can look it up for ourselves if we want. Also, there is more and more often a list of friends that they are there with.  I hope I don't sound too angry here - believe me, it is unintentional.  After all, if I'm going to spend gads of time reading the status updates of people I both see and haven't seen in years, people I talk to frequently and haven't had any contact with since I was 11 years old, I deserve any and all annoyances I get - it's Facebook!  It is the great time-sucker of the opening years of the 21st Century.  But as part of the greatest social experiment of all time, and as a newly self-licensed  sociologist cutting her teeth on the oblivious status posters out there, I am bound by moral obligation to stick with the facts.  And the fact is, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

And there you have it.  As I stated after the first half of my studies, this list is in no way comprehensive.  It is a living, breathing, evolving study, the completion of which I may never see in my lifetime.  That being said, I will ever be dedicated and vigilant in spying on and commenting about other people as I peruse the information they put on their Facebook accounts.

**No animals were harmed in the making of this post.  Hopefully no feelings were either.**