Blue Helm

Elizabeth Bernstein wrote a marvelous piece in the Wall Street Journal today about the pitfalls of Facebook and how the site has the potential of ruining friendships. Now I can’t say that Facebook has ruined any of my personal friendships, but I have distanced myself from certain people (and fan pages) that post strange, annoying or inappropriate content on the site. And one of my absolute favorite Facebook tools is the ability to ‘Hide’ the status updates of a friend or page. With the click of a mouse, you can easily conceal someone’s updates without altogether ‘unfriending’ that person or group and without them ever knowing (just move your mouse to the right side of a friend’s status update and click on the ‘Hide’ icon).

But what if you’re guilty of being hidden? You’ll never really know, but if you spew out the following types of status updates, you’re probably not being seen by as many of your Facebook friends as you think:

“I’m so tired! I wish I could go back to bed.” Ugh. Status updates like these are pointless and repetitive. This is perhaps the biggest problem with Facebook updates—they’re boring! Before you post a useless statement like this on Facebook, think to yourself: “Would I care about this if I saw it on my news feed?”

“It’s Monday.” Yes, well of course it is. Most of us have access to calendars or brains, so we really don’t need updates like these.

“I miss my smoochy koochy boo so much! Come home baby boo!” Avoid the mushy romance talk on Facebook. No one likes it. Except your boo.

“I’m so hung over from last night. I haven’t been that drunk in a long time.” Now your boss, coworkers, grandparents and former elementary school teachers know you’re a boozer. Congrats.

“I’m having a really bad day. I wish I weren’t so lonely.” It’s fine to use Facebook as a forum to fume about a product, company or difficult situation, but don’t use it as a way to vent about how sad or friendless you are. It makes you look pitiful.

“Why the h*** do those d*** cops give out so many f***** tickets!?!” Profanity turns most people off. It’s best not to use it on Facebook.

Other topics to avoid on Facebook include potentially offensive religious or political rants, information about your sex life, disparaging comments about other friends (or your boss!) and shameless self-promotion (that last one is especially applicable to businesses and fan pages). Oh, and please lay off the quizzes! I don’t care what Muppet Baby you most resemble or what African mammal you would be in another life.

Bottom line: people want variety. They want interesting, genuine, unique and funny status updates. They want motivating or attention-grabbing comments. They want links to hilarious videos or relevant news articles. They want to see what you’re up to, but only if it’s intriguing or inspiring or amusing.

We’re all guilty of posting dumb updates sometimes. But the repeat offenders should beware. I’ve hidden over 50 of my friends over the past few months. Are you one of them? You may never know. Pwahahahaha!