What's Happening, Facebook? You're turning me into an asshole, that's what

I love that Facebook is blamed for making one's internal dialogue external. That's not Facebook MAKING you an asshole. That's Facebook REVEALING you're an asshole.

I think Facebook is guilty of a lot of things, but this isn't one of them.

I'm very sorry for the author of this post. She clearly has messed up emotional and social life - she's hanging out with people incompatible with her but has an emotional attachment to them and can't bring herself to do what she should have done years ago: just forget about all those people (cousins, parents, sister, friend from high school), remove their phone numbers and block their very first attempts of "friending" on Facebook.

Not talking about someone's thoughts is not the way to go; why would you want to be around people who don't want to know what you think? Why would you want to be friends with people who are offended easily?

If anything, Facebook did her a favor: it showed her how toxic and dysfunctional her relations were. It's time to end those relations and move along with life - with or without Facebook, which doesn't matter, as long long as it is with the right people.

I wouldn't blame Facebook for having bad judgement.

It's wise to be discreet in your opinion on a public forum... especially if you care what the people who read it may think about you afterwards.

I have some people like that on my life, but I would never tell them that kind of stuff, even though I think the same. I just ignore them. I have them added to my facebook, but unscribed from their posts, have them on my "restricted list" (who can not se what I post) and out of my chat list. To all effects, they think I just don't use my facebook.

It's interesting what Total Information Awareness does to relationships. I'm reminded of the (excellent) episode of Black Mirror, 'The Entire History of You', which is apparently available in full on YouTube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImbpjWRMy2k

One might as well blame the <input> box.

No, seriously -- there's a context-free aspect ("Write a comment...") of a blank comment box that invites all range of interaction, positive and negative, relevant and not. Imagine if instead of a blank <input> box, users were prompted with a question ("Do you also like ice cream?") or statement ("Leave your condolences...") that guided the relevancy of the response.

When is it acceptable to use ALL CAPS!?!? in a post like this?

It's more about culture than Facebook when social ties (especially family bonds) are so weak that they can be broken with a status update.