Me today (left) and me about 3 years ago (right)

Let me preface this random thought with- I wrote it the night BEFORE a major session of drama unfolded on my Facebook page where a couple I know basically blew up from the inside out after one gained access to the others account. It wasn’t pretty.

We all do it to some extent. From a small jab at someone’s new profile picture or asking another friend if they saw what so-and-so just wrote on someone else’s page. Facebook has become so engrained in our daily lives that most of the time if you overhear someone say ‘George posted about going to the beach’ you would know right off the bat it was a reference to a man named George that posted information on Facebook about going to the beach.

Facebook has become the virtual water cooler of our lives. It’s where we hang out to see what’s going on with our “Friends” on a daily basis. Sometimes however people take it too far and expose their personal relationship drama for everyone to see. They drop trou, whip it out and rub it all over their page, their partners page and anyone else they can drag into it. Personally it makes me anxious to see it. I get uneasy and try to avoid the people involved until it blows over but there is that proverbial train wreck aspect- one cant look away and end up reading all the posts.

I wondered for quite a while why people do that and Ive come to the conclusion there are two basic reasons why. The first (in no particular order of importance or frequency) being they want to ‘out’ the other person to their friends. If one person feels wronged they will find a way to make sure everyone knows it whether its commenting on posts to leak out information or they just go a more direct route posting on the other persons wall or their own about how they were wronged. Then the string of comments follow getting nastier as it goes. Things usually end up in some type of deletion- deleting comments, entire posts or even each other from their friends list. On a rare occasion you will get someone that was able to hack the others account and blow things up from the inside out. Damage done though if we saw it before it was deleted. It’s really stuff Im not supposed to know about these people. Stop it and fight like normal people do via text message

The second reason for such drama seems to be that one person wants to shame and/or embarrass their partner and rally ALL the friends behind them validating their point- their friends and the other persons friends. That never seems to really work. For the most part there will be a division of loyalty. There will be a few people stuck in the middle since they know both friends and you might have the occasional cross over friend that will take up for the other person but in general when the drama starts people don’t switch teams. I try my best to stay out of those messes. I do admit that Im the curious type and find myself wanting to know what’s going on but it’s like being in the room with a couple that is arguing, it gets pretty uncomfortable pretty quick.

Facebook really can be a very useful communication tool, a way to reconnect with old friends, round up the gang for a dinner out or keep up to date with what Aunt Martha is doing but this type of destructive relationship drama is not supposed to be posted online for the world to see. It’s weird enough to have the misfortune of seeing your couples friends argue but to have it immortalized online (well at least until one of them deletes it) is almost offensive. These people need to stop hiding behind their Facebook wall and hash out their relationships one on one and leave the rest of us out of it.