Prime peeve, but this is not confined to FaceBook alone, is posting pictures with no captions, no identification of who is in the photo (besides the person posting it), or where or on what occasion it was taken, or when. I understand that people may be reluctant to “tag” people in photographs. But this is fast becoming something you cannot prevent anyway, what with face recognition being built into FaceBook and other social media.
An example of this annoying and frustrating practice was the recent post of a photo, without any caption, of a friend, together with H______ (an easily recognizable and world famous person) and two other unidentified persons. H______ was holding some sort of trophy or award. And that was it. The context, from previous postings was a national conference. Several “likes” and comments were posted but no one asked about the details. It’s this whole notion that a “picture” is all that is necessary. History, context, dates, names, are left out for some reason. People post videos on YouTube all the time, clips of singers, performers, actors, and don’t bother to identify who or where or when. On the radio, how often do I listen to a set only to have the announcer run down the list and read off the date of the CD reissue, and never think to mention the date of the original recording which I know was thirty or forty years prior. History! Context! The song has meaning when you understand when it was written and recorded, what was happening at the time!
But I digress. Another FB peeve is posting something other than a recent portrait sized photograph of yourself as your profile photo. Several annoying things that people post instead of a photograph of their current selves: a high school or childhood photo; a photo of their child, or their dog, or their cat, or some political symbol. Really folks, I would like to see you as YOU are, Thank You!
And another perhaps lesser peeve, but a genuine peeve nonetheless is the posting of memes. The memes themselves are often good, pungent, pithy, hitting the nail on the head observations of some sort or another, BUT… often you cannot comment directly on your friend’s post but only on the original, which may already have hundreds or even thousands of comments. This defeats the whole purpose of posting anything since you cannot make a comment which will be seen by your friend who posted the observation in the first place. Indeed, I do not even understand why anyone adds their comment to an anonymous list of hundreds or thousands of comments. There is no conversation here, no actual communication between even two persons, never mind the hundreds or thousands involved. You are literally a voice crying in the wilderness. Or spitting in the ocean.
View from Prospect Hill 