I have never liked the FML meme. Neither do I like statements made that proclaim, verbally or in a written manner, that “my life is awesome.” I think both of those extremes are unpleasant, and inappropriate for passive blasting, a la the social media obsession of the week.

I have certain friends/acquaintances/people I follow that like to employ these types of dramatic, exclamatory statements all about how awesome life is right now, how much they love their lives, and similar raves. Others LOVE to rag on how awful everything else is and leave off with a FML hash or even the words fully written out. I think this use of social media is kinda silly.

Its obnoxious in the first example, and annoying in the second. I am more a fan of status updates in the truest sense: “Dude! I just saw Steve Jobs ride by on his bike!” or “Best.Pie.Evar” accompanied by pictorial evidence. I try to stay away from hyperbolic exclamations of grandeur/horror. (I try!) Even when things ARE getting me down, and it leaks into my status updates, I try to put a funny spin on things, because I believe that makes Twitter worth it for OTHER people.

If everyone thinks you’re a self-important douche on Twitter/Facebook, it just makes the services look bad too. And that, for me, is where some of the misunderstood stigma behind Twitter stems from– people like to say “Nobody gives a shit what time you had breakfast or that it was pancakes.” In reality, I bet people would be kind of amused if you had pancakes at 3 in the morning and they had sprinkles AND bacon in them (picture included).

However, they would be less so (amused) if this all occurred because your life was SO AWESOME right now.