Scott's Pet Peeve #8431
by Scott Hardie on November 18, 2013
Random strangers on Facebook are not exactly known for impressive displays of intellect, but with several of my friends in the hospital recently, I've been annoyed by one particular bad habit that their friends seem to have:
1) Someone posts that s/he is experiencing a certain medical problem and is going into the hospital. Friends reply with supportive words.
2) A few hours later, the OP posts an update describing what the doctors are doing. Other friends reply with questions like, "omg what happened?"
3) A day or two later, the OP posts that s/he is being discharged from the hospital and is recovering. Other friends reply with questions like, "omg what happened?"
The same goes for someone posting a series of updates about any serious crisis, such as the death of a close family member. People, if you want to know "omg what happened," then go to the OP's timeline or profile or whatever Facebook calls it these days, and scroll down for the original post describing the problem in the first place, because the subsequent posts are clearly intended as follow-ups due to their lack of inherent context. By asking "omg what happened," you demonstrate that you are too lazy and/or stupid to bother with this very quick research, and possibly too lousy of a friend to notice when your friends have been in crisis for a while already.
Not coincidentally: Evie, I'm glad you're recovering. Chris, get well soon. Lisa, I'm so sorry for your loss. Becky and Becky's family, I hope for the best.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Eschew Obfuscation
For any FIN players wondering where in the hell the game is: I used my little free time over last weekend writing a mini-post – three whopping paragraphs – and at the end of the weekend I just couldn't bear to publish it so short. (The title of this post was the planned title of that post.) I have now rearranged my social so that weekends are more free, and one thing I plan to do with the time is resume writing FIN, starting this weekend by expanding my three paragraphs into more like three pages. Go »Not in My Back Yard
I love Unsolved Mysteries. The show told such interesting stories in perfect bite-size pieces, and knew how to make the hair on your neck stand up. I wish they were more objective in their reporting and didn't rely on pseudoscience as evidence (using psychics to prove ghosts and polygraph results to condemn criminals), but damn they put on an entertaining show. Go »Modern Music
Sadness is not when one of your favorite bands (Smashing Pumpkins) puts out their final album in MP3 format only and you miss it because you don't want to get into file-sharing. Sadness is five years later, when you happily stumble across a website with the entire thing available for download and you finally learn how heinous and unpublishable the album was all along. Go »Thorough Performance Reviews
I'm not around much this week because it's time for the annual performance reviews at work. I'm staying up till the wee hours each night writing the reviews so that the two-day marathon of face-to-face chats at the end of the week will go well. It's a win-win: For the employees doing a great job, it's my chance to offer serious praise without it sounding phony or arbitrary. Go »Solitaire
Right now, I don't think I could write emotionally about my feelings from last night as well as I could have in the moment, but I haven't finished considering them and this is a part of that process. Long story short, I found myself passing on friends who really wanted to spend time with me in order to sit here and write code for Celebrity Goo Game, and I came to question what the hell I was doing. As in, my whole lifestyle. Go »
