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 »

Manly Pastimes

"So what did you do this weekend?" "I went drag racing." "Really? Go »

Bad Housekeeping

If you're lazy like me, there's not a right time to put away the clean dishes. Who cares if you use them one-by-one out of the dishwasher? But there *is* a right time to discover that they're still dirty, and that's long before you're putting away the last couple of items after eating out of the dishwasher for days. Go »

All King and No Kubrick Make Jack a Dull Boy

I recently got to talking with friends who liked The Shining, both Stephen King's novel and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of it, but who were unaware that King has always loathed the movie, despite its reputation as one of the best horror films ever made. It's hard to imagine that a writer doesn't know his own work better than someone interpreting it, but I think this is one of those rare cases where the writer is just too close to the story to get it. Here are three reasons why I think Kubrick's film better understands the material, and is better overall, than King's novel: 1) In King's version, Jack Torrance is a fundamentally decent man who wouldn't hurt a fly, but who is down on his luck and desperate. Go »

The Vagueness Continues

Things are looking up. Tomorrow, we sign the lease on a new house in Sarasota, bigger and cheaper than the ridiculously overpriced apartment we've had for five years. It's the first in a series of changes that we've wanted to make for a long time. Go »

So Long, NCSA Primer

Someone asked me for help learning HTML today. I turned to my trusted traditional source, the good old primer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, but alas, it has finally been removed after all these years. This was one of the major how-to guides in the early years of the web, and it's the very guide that I used to teach myself HTML one weekend in 1996, from which this very site you're reading has since evolved. Go »

The Revised Revised Revised Story

Last spring, This Modern World ran a great parody charting the decline of civil liberties in recent years, after the then-shocking revelation that the government was building a database of every call made in the country: (link) I was reminded of that over the weekend as the latest shocking revelation came out, that the FBI has vastly abused its new ability to request confidential information in the interest of national security (link), almost as if it was the next panel in the strip. Except I'm not laughing. Oh, what I'd have given to be the reporter at Alberto Gonzales's press conference this morning. Go »