Webupon

Your wall: This is where friends post vague, yet incriminating messages for all of your other friends to see. This is also where your status messages appear. You can post photos/links/etc. and they show up on others’ News Feed as well, allowing all of your friends to see where you’ve been, what useless web sites you’ve been surfing, and the black eye that your daughter gave to your son.

News feed: This is where your status messages/photos/links appear. It is also where all of your friends’ status messages appear, along with any follow up comments made by their friends. You will find that some of your friends are indeed insane – a fact that you may have missed when you were in high school or college getting wasted with them. Follow up comments supporting this insanity makes it comforting to know that your friend has found more insane people to hang out with, thus making it less likely that they will gun down an entire building of people. At least not alone.

Like: If you see someone’s status message, picture, or link – you can, with little effort, show to all that you approve of such a thing. You do this by clicking the word “Like”. “Hey everybody, I got a promotion!” someone declares. You think that’s great, so you click “Like” and it shows that you give it thumbs up. But this can be a little confusing when someone states something such as “Billy is going to England and won’t be able to log into Facebook for 4 weeks” and you click “Like”. Do you like the fact that Billy can finally realize his lifelong dream of seeing Big Ben and Parliament, or the fact that you won’t have to hear about his stupid cats for 4 glorious weeks?

Comments: This is where you can express your opinion of a status/photo/link when you have more to say than “uh huh”. Here’s where you can express your support for your friend’s hardship, an amusing anecdote, or an adorable child’s picture. Or lack of support, I guess. But since I haven’t seen a lot of “Wow, your kids all have HUGE noses!”, I have determined that it seems to be an unwritten rule that those comments are not to be posted. That is what the private message and chat features are for. Some comments venture into highly emotional territory. This could draw you into a never-ending debate with someone whom you will never agree with. Like that cute, but crazy girl from your history class in college, just “Let it go, man”. Just like you knew that she wasn’t going to be “the one”, it is unlikely that any of the world’s most pressing problems will be solved on Facebook.

Chat: Here is where you can, in real time, chat individually with one friend at a time. As it is a more focused audience, you can chat about more specific details that would be uninteresting to your friends as a whole. However, though this is a private chat, this does not restrict your friend from posting what you just wrote to her in confidence as her status. Fool me once… (shaking fist)

Quizzes: Probably the most useless aspect of Facebook. You don’t want to take any of these stinkers, because in addition to the possibility of contracting a virus, you will hate yourself later for having spent time on it. And I mean hate yourself far more than you will already hate yourself for wasting 5 hours straight on Facebook alone. But don’t discourage your friends from taking these, as they do offer a seed for your useless commentary when nothing else new is in your News Feed.

You say it’s your birthday: When your real friends and family forget your birthday, fear not, as many of your Facebook friends (some of which you haven’t seen in 20 years…or never) are ready and willing to wish you a happy one. After all, Facebook tells them it’s your birthday, and if they miss that, they will see a bunch of birthday wishes showing up in their News Feed. Your smarter friends will realize that this is probably an indication of someone’s birthday. If you can’t jump on the bandwagon with a few keystrokes to wish a happy birthday after all of that, you are certainly to be labeled as a complete jerk. Especially after you just spent 10 minutes determining via quiz that your aura’s color is purple.

Tagging: You can post an embarrassing photo of your friend on your wall. This allows you and all of your friends to laugh at that other friend. But this isn’t enough, because the passed-out or throwing-up friend has plenty of other friends that you don’t know. And THEY should not be deprived of seeing the embarrassing photo as well. So when you ‘tag’ that person in the photo, it shows up on their wall, and even more people can point and laugh.

Friend Requests: Periodically, you will get requests to form a Facebook friendship. Do not take this lightly, as with it comes huge responsibility. By agreeing to friendship with this person you may or may not know all that well, you are agreeing to see their endless status messages in your News Feed and allowing them the opportunity to post ridiculous comments below your posts. You may have not realized this before we became friends, and for that I apologize.

Lurkers: By my rough calculations, after exchanging the blood oath that is friendship on Facebook, I only really see evidence of about 20% of my friends doing anything on Facebook (status, comments, or chat). The remaining 80% seem to be just lurkers, finding me both handsome and a sound judge of photographic composition, but simply afraid to go on the record as such. Though it is far more likely that this group is comprised of people who signed up on Facebook, made some friend requests and then never returned…it makes me feel better to believe that they are simply lurking.

New Friends: Not everyone comes to Facebook at the same time, so resist the temptation to comment about another or a photo of him/her in a negative manner. Sure, you may think that since that person is not on Facebook, they will never see your harsh criticism. But assuredly, the instant you layeth the textual smackdown on someone, you will soon get their friend request. And by then, you will have forgotten the terrible things that you wrote, and soon it will be too late. Sorry, Mom. I swear I didn’t mean it.

Status: This is the main content generator for Facebook. Friends tell each other what they’ve been doing, share a funny story, or convey how tired/bored/etc. that they are. The intent here is really to start some type of conversation or interaction with your friends. With that goal in mind, some people write vague statements in their status messages which will inevitably trigger follow up comments such as “Why did you have to go to the emergency room?” or “How did a shampoo bottle become lodged in your rear?”. This can be annoying if continually repeated. Any status messages referencing a terrible event that has occurred are usually met with sympathy, compassion, and then a request for photos.

How to write a good status message: I think the key here is that this is just like opening your mouth in public. You want to be informative by being either interesting or funny. Or both. Not interesting or funny? Probably not very useful. This doesn’t stop a lot of “I’m tired” status messages from being written. No matter, as it’s better than nothing. What types of status messages get the most commentary? People like to talk about a music video, a celebrity, or anything having to do with children. And my very scientific research has found that you will get very little follow up commentary when the subject is anything remotely related to politics, religion, or my own genitalia.