A few weeks ago after someone went through the trouble of creating a fake profile to anonymously hurl abuse at me through Facebook, I decided that I needed to go cold turkey and I wrote this long, really worthy note about needing to take time out. Give or take one week later and I am back on it everyday, hunched over my laptop ROFLing like a freak at photos of me fellating a Corona bottle or writing passive aggressive comments to exes. This is all because I realised that A) I might actually have to start talking to people rather than stalking their status updates B) I can carefully word all communication on Facebook, in turn hiding what a smug, tactless cunt I am in real life and C) I have nothing better to do.
About 90% of Facebook annoys the shit out of me. Top of my hit list includes invitations to join groups like ‘Stop Polish immigrant paedophiles giving Britian’s children AIDs’, people with 1000+ photos from exactly the same angle and endless status updates such as ‘hehe going for a shit now LOLz!’ or ’3 more sleeps till my scummy holeeday in Magaluf 
’.This is a no. I do however enjoy the freedom to stalk. The day Facebook introduces the feature ‘who has been obsessively viewing your profile’ is the day I retire from the internet. I should be allowed to hate-stalk whoever I like. Although I’ve started editing my own newsfeed so I can avoid seeing updates such as ‘Gash Face is really happy with his cutesy, non-mental new girlfriend, love you baby!’ or ‘Dick Splash has a really amazing new job that they definitely don’t deserve’. Yes I blinker them out, but obviously I still want them on my friend list, so if anything spectacularly good happens to me I can nonchalantly drop it into an attention seeking status update. Psychopathic? Possibly, but anyone that says they don’t Facebook stalk is a deluded, lying prick. It is purely a tool for socially acceptable stalking- cutting out all the fiddly stuff like hunting them down by their IP address or rifling through NHS records to find where they live, that kinda thing.
Look at this smug nerd. He got rich off your addiction.
After much practice and to stop people from finding out I have questionable mental health I have a certain amount of unconscious Facebook etiquette/ damage limitation that I stick to. For example-
-it’s glaringly obvious that I’m surgically attached to my laptop/ Blackberry so taking more than 24 hours to reply means I hate them. On the flipside replying immediately makes you look like a big billy-no-mates sociopath.
-one X or three? what the fuck is XO as well…what am I supposed to do with that? Also don’t ever get X happy, if in doubt just copy whatever they left you. Don’t X boys who don’t X you, it either scares them or makes them think you want to fuck them.
-try to avoid any employment related comments. My status ‘HAS ANYONE GOT ANY JOB IDEAS? I FUCKING HATE MINE’ was met with the sack the following week. True story.
-silently untagging every single unflattering photo of you eg. blowing chunks into a pub toilet/ being groped/ double chinned is acceptable.
-only ever accept friend requests from people you have actually had a normal non rapey exchange of words with. Alternatively adding anyone who is extremely fit/ beneficial to your career, is completely fine. And people you work with, you sort of have to…even if you’d happily stab them in the face on a daily basis.
-tone doesn’t translate well over Facebook. Not everyone will take ‘you’re a big, fat fucking queer’ as a term of endearment.
-avoid attention seeking status’. No matter how tempting it is to put ‘Jo is lying in bed in just her panties with very low self esteem and needs cheering up hehehehe LMAO!’
-never, EVER drunk Facebook it will only end in tears. Violent, lager fuelled tears.
Themz my rules for sanity anyway and they’re the ones I’m sticking to till the internet vomits up another site I can become dangerously addicted to.