Ask Yourself: Is It Facebook-worthy?

Here’s a random post for you that doesn’t involve Rockport, festivals, home design, opossums, or any of my other favorite subjects for posting. It involves a question, one I have been pondering for quite some time now…

Why do so many people post about their family health issues on facebook? I’m not talking about using facebook as a convenient means of updating a whole bunch of people about an illness or accident. I mean updating everyone in your network with general musings about you and your offspring’s general state of health, usually a few minutes into your day.

A typical status update goes something like: “Feeling under the weather today. Hope I can get in to the doctor’s”.  Then, four hours later: “Feeling a little better. Took Tanner to his grandmother’s house and she gave me some Codeine she had left over from her last surgery. Yippee!”. Then, in another four hours: “Too sick to get up from the couch to make supper. Hope it’s just a 24-hour thing. Just grateful I managed to type in this status update with my aching flu-ridden fingers.”

I realize these examples are a little…over the top. And I realize I could just avoid reading these status updates, and I realize that one could question pretty much everything people choose to post on facebook. But — as far as I’m concerned anway — I understand updating people on major events, posting photos from the school concert, a vacation, et cetera. But providing all of your friends, family, colleagues, old boyfriends and that girl you knew for a few months in the 5th grade with a blow-by-blow account of your physical ups and downs — with a brief narration of taking your kids to the doctor thrown in for good measure? This something outside my range of comprehension. Which might speak to my limitations, and, if so, I’m sorry, facebook friends. I will try to be more sympathetic.

And on that note, I thought I’d let all the readers of GMG know that I’m sort of feeling like I have a cold coming on. I’ll let you know how it goes.