The OCD Diaries

December 3, 2013

5 Reasons Not to Share Relationship Troubles on Facebook

One of the things I enjoy about Facebook is seeing who is hooking up with who. When I see friends and family basking in the glow of a new love, it makes me happy. But even on Facebook, love is a double-edged sword.

Mood music:

At some point, every relationship needs work. When that happens, Facebook becomes the last place you should share your feelings. Tossing laundry stained with the blood of your busted heart onto your wall for all to see has several bad effects. Not the least of which are:

It’s harder to make up when your anger goes viral. Once you say something in anger to your significant other on Facebook, it becomes a lot harder to take those words back. By the time you think better of it and press the delete button, most people have already seen it.
It’s harder for people to take your feelings seriously. This may sound cruel, but it’s the truth. When you take to Facebook at every rough turn in your relationship, friends and family become desensitized. One friend once Facebooked a live, running commentary of a fight she was having with her husband. Every time he said something that made her mad, she got on Facebook. I eventually called her out on it and she unfriended me. I hate to say it, but I don’t miss her.
Nobody likes drama kings or queens. This is an extension of the second point. If all you do on Facebook is complain about how wronged you feel, people are going to get tired of you. You become that annoying sound in the back of the room when people are trying to watch something on TV.
You shouldn’t be telling us about your problems. Remember that we’re not the ones you are having a fight with. If you’re telling all of us about your romantic problems, you’re clearly not present to talk through it with the person who matters most.
Today’s Facebook venting is tomorrow’s court document. Let’s say your relationship crumbles and you’re headed for divorce. Once that happens, the lawyer representing your estranged spouse will scour the Internet for every shred of anything you’ve ever written online. Depending on what you’ve said in the heat of the moment, those words will be used against you.

Having said all that, I’ll go on the record and admit that I’m not a perfect follower of these points. I’ve written blog posts about difficult relationships, and I certainly won’t be getting a prize anytime soon for mending all the fences that deserve my attention. What I post here goes straight to Facebook. In my defense, though, I’ve typically described things that happened deep in the past. It’s written long after I’ve had time to process the emotions and lessons.

And I always have my limits. If I’m having a disagreement with my wife, I’m not sharing it on the social networks.

She’d kill me if I did, and rightfully so.

May 28, 2013

Narcissism on Facebook? No Kidding!

Last year, The Guardian wrote about a report which concluded that Facebook is rampant with socially aggressive narcissism.

No offense to the author or publication, but studies like this are laughable for the obviousness of their conclusions.

Mood music:

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From the report:

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a “socially disruptive” narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media sceptics.

People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly.

The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships.

The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site’s public walls and changed their profile pictures more often.

Duh.

A couple years ago, this article would have offended me. At last count, I had 2,470 friends on Facebook. Meanwhile, this blog’s Facebook page had 578 likes and 37 people were subscribed to my updates. I change my profile and cover pics often, and between my personal blog posts and work-related writings, I’m a pretty prolific poster. You could say the description in that article fits me like a glove.

The report misses some finer detail, though. For example, a lot of my friend count is because my network is made up of friends and business associates. I’m also connected to a lot of Facebook pages for guitar makers and sellers because I have a passion for guitars. I’m also connected to a lot of writers who are not personal friends, but I admire their work and connecting to them is how I keep tabs on their creative output.

I won’t lie, though: I’d rather have a big network than a small one. I’m a social animal who likes to know what people are up to. And it warms the heart knowing there are more than a few people interested in keeping tabs on what I’m doing as well.

That’s a mark of narcissism right there. But I’m not making a fresh revelation here. I’ve written at least three posts in which I own this part of me.

Read about my struggles with narcissim:

“Narcissism Is A Fatal Illness“

“Narcissism Inc.“

“I’m a Narcissist (and So Are You)”

One of my friends posts all day long about his security work, his weight-lifting progress and what he’s listening to. You could call that narcissistic. But I wouldn’t miss his posts for the world. Another friend loves taking her self-portrait from the seat of her car and posts them multiple times a week. That’s the mark of a narcissist. But she never, ever speaks ill of anyone on Facebook, nor does she complain about how hard life is. That is not the mark of a narcissist.

We all have a self-absorbed side to our personalities. Anyone who denies it is full of shit. We all worry about our art, professions, friendships and how others perceive us. Facebook gives us at least some ability to present the self image we aspire to. That’s more than a lot of us used to have. Why not use it?

If you’re the type of person who drops everything to help someone in need, who tirelessly works to advance causes that make humanity better, who loves unconditionally, understand this:

You’re gold in my book. Even if you post a shitload of pictures of yourself and accept every friend request that comes your way.

Facebook is one reflection of the human condition in the 21st century, but it’s not the whole story. Not even close.

February 14, 2013

If You Saw It on Facebook, It’s Probably a Lie

People on Facebook love to get all self-righteous. That’s fine by me, as long as the emotion is based on truth. The problem these days is that people are increasingly gullible, accepting memes as gospel when they are in fact bullshit.

Mood music:

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One example is a picture of a letter reported to be written by a U.S. service man claiming, essentially, that Starbucks hates soldiers and won’t let them have their coffee. The letter reads:

Dear everyone: Please pass this along to anyone you know, this needs to get out in the open. Recently Marines over in Iraq supporting this country in OIF wrote to Starbucks because they wanted to let them know how much they liked their coffee and try to score some free coffee grounds. Starbucks wrote back telling the Marines thanks for their support in their business, but that they don’t support the War and anyone in it and that they won’t send them the Coffee.

So as not to offend them we should not support in buying any Starbucks products. As a War vet and writing to you patriots I feel we should get this out in the open. I know this War might not be very popular with some folks, but that doesn’t mean we don’t support the boys on the ground fighting street to street and house to house for what they and I believe is right. If you feel the same as I do then pass this along, or you can discard it and I’ll never know. Thanks very much for your support to me, and I know you’ll all be there again here soon when I deploy once more.

Semper Fidelis, Sgt Howard C. Wright
1st Force Recon Co
1st Plt PLT RTO

The letter is actually not new; Sgt. Wright wrote it in 2004. But I’ve seen it on Facebook a few times in the past week alone, and people are posting it to their profiles with comments about how evil Starbucks is and how they won’t ever buy coffee there. I knew it was bullshit straightaway. I’ve bought a lot of coffee from Starbucks, and I clearly remember its campaign to send coffee to the troops. Customers were given the option of buying coffee by the pound that would then be sent to the front lines.

Back when Sgt. Wright wrote the letter, Starbucks contacted him to clarify its position. He then sent out another email, retracting his above statement:

Dear Readers,
Almost 5 months ago I sent an email to you my faithful friends. I did a wrong thing that needs to be cleared up. I heard by word of mouth about how Starbucks said they didn’t support the war and all. I was having enough of that kind of talk and didn’t do my research properly like I should have. This is not true. Starbucks supports men and women in uniform. They have personally contacted me and I have been sent many copies of their company’s policy on this issue. So I apologize for this quick and wrong letter that I sent out to you. Now I ask that you all pass this email around to everyone you passed the last one to. Thank you very much for understanding about this.

Howard C. Wright, Sgt USMC

The Facebook meme is someone’s rewrite of the letter, with facts changed and no mention of Sgt. Wright’s later retraction:

This whole thing illustrates a larger problem with Facebook: In our rush to show how morally upright we are, we users fall for just about anything we see. We essentially do what Sgt. Wright did back in 2004, acting on rumors without doing our homework first.

I include myself in this group; I’ve fallen for fraudulent memes in the past as well. It’s a human trait to take shortcuts, and memes are a shortcut. The lesson is that if you see statements of outrage on Facebook, you should research the matter before opining, because what you see is probably a lie.

November 20, 2012October 7, 2015

Politics, Facebook Friends and the Damage Done

After all my blogging this past election season about how friends and family shouldn’t become enemies over politics and how we all need to knock off the conspiracy theories and name-calling, I’m reviewing my Facebook friends list in search of damage. Here’s my final analysis.

It turns out one person unfriended me. I considered her a solid Facebook friend. We went to high school together and shared many musical tastes. We both post a lot about our families and love and care for our children. But last week she cut me loose without explanation. I think I know why.

She has always been the type to complain a lot on Facebook, such as fights with her husband and hatred of her job. She held nothing back. That’s her right. It is her Facebook account, after all. The day after the election, she melted down, suggesting that things would never be OK again and that we were all doomed. I mentioned her comment in my day-after-the-election post, though I didn’t mention her by name. My goal was to cheer up her and others crushed by Romney’s defeat by offering some “life goes on” perspective. But she apparently wasn’t up for it.

No hard feelings. I don’t regret what I did, and I did keep her comment anonymous.

Meanwhile, I unfriended four people, including a husband and wife, last week. I didn’t do so because these people were liberal or conservative. I did it because I felt they were going over the top and painting everyone who disagreed with them as tyrants.

One former and very liberal friend finally gave me more than I could take when he posted a meme trivializing the power of prayer compared to science. He had been posting stuff like that all along and pinning all the world’s folly on Republicans. Believing as I do that both parties are equally to blame for our current economic and political troubles and in the power of prayer, I decided I didn’t need to see his bullshit anymore.

I hated unfriending the husband and wife. I particularly liked the husband, given our common musical tastes and the paths we both crossed back in the day, even if we didn’t know each other at the time. But they were taking their hatred of President Obama to levels I finally found too toxic for my blood.

If they had simply posted stuff about how Romney was the better choice for America, I’d have been fine with it. But everything became a conspiracy to them. Obama went from being the least capable steward of the economy to someone like Hitler, a guy who happily kills women and children and then covers it up. Their posts intensified after the election, and that’s when I respectfully cut ties.

All in all, I’d say the damage wasn’t too terrible. That’s a small amount of unfriending considering I have 2,334 friends, family and business associates in my network.

I choose to believe most of us got through all the vitriol in one piece. Hopefully, we can enjoy each other’s company a bit more now.

At least until the next election.

July 17, 2012October 7, 2015

Lessons From Facebook Unfriend Finder

I recently re-activated the Facebook Unfriend Finder that I wrote about last winter, after discovering my wife was using a similar plug-in. Given my past paranoia over why certain people unfriended me, she thought it was a bad idea for me to use it. But I figured if she could use it, so could I. A few weeks in, here’s what I’ve learned.

When your friend count goes down, it’s usually not because you offended someone. It’s more likely because they deactivated their profile or because they never really knew you to begin with. When the Unfriend Finder alerts me to someone leaving my network, most of the time it’s because they de-activated their profile. I have gotten unfriended outright, but it’s usually someone who was only a remote connection who I never really talked to.

When you work in the media, it’s not uncommon to accept a lot of strangers into your network and vice versa. I’ll accept friend requests from strangers because I figure they’re looking for easy access to my security articles or this blog. Some will accept a friend request to see if they’re interested in the content you’re pushing and defriend when they decide they don’t want it. Fair enough.

Some of the strangers I’ve connected with have become good friends over time. That makes it all worth it to me because, as the saying goes, no man is a failure who has friends. Some folks have annoyed me with their political diatribes and mean-spirited jabs at others, so I’ve cut them loose. I excised someone yesterday, in fact.

For the most part, though, my core network has stuck around. That tells me all the worrying I did was for nothing.

In the final analysis, you can only be yourself in the social networking world. You can’t change for the sake of pleasing everyone. It’s better to take the occasional stand and be disagreed with than go along to get along. Maybe you are someone who should change because you tend to be a jerk online and off-. If you are, this post won’t inspire you to change.

A little something to consider when you see your connection count go down.

July 2, 2012

OCD and Facebook Scrabble Don’t Mix

I’ve always avoided all those Facebook games, but I recently decided to give Scrabble a shot. I’m a professional wordsmith, so I figured what the hell. I can kick a few asses and feel good about my word wizardry. But I’m the one getting my ass kicked, in more ways than one.

Mood music:

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I have six games going and I’m getting beat to shit in all but one of them. I have my excuses, for sure. I keep getting stuck with letters I can’t work with. I also question the sanity of those who decided what qualifies as a legitimate word. Most proper nouns are rejected, but the random name will make it through. I see my opponents getting by with a lot of abbreviated words, but I can’t catch a break. Asshat isn’t a legitimate word in the Scrabble dictionary. I cry bullshit. Also, who decided oi is a word?

Here’s the real problem, though: The game triggers the part of my OCD that can’t leave well enough alone. If someone sends me a Scrabble request, I have to respond immediately. No saving my turn for later. I’ve discovered that two of my opponents have the same problem. Two seconds after I make my move, there’s another Scrabble request from the person I just made a move against. Making matters worse, they’re good. Too good. They drop 78-point words on the board like it’s nothing. Bastards.

I’ll keep playing for a little while longer, but then I think I’ll have to delete the Scrabble app forever. It’s too big a trigger for me.

If I were winning more often, I’d no doubt feel differently. But then I’d probably become even more compulsive about the game.

That being the case, losing is probably a winning strategy for me.

June 28, 2012

Five Steps for a Less-Irritating Facebook Presence

Editor’s note: This is a sequel to yesterday’s post, “Stupid Things People Say on Facebook.” In this installment, Bill outlines the steps he takes to be less of a jerk on Facebook. He admits he’s not perfect, especially when it comes to the fifth example.

Mood music:

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My personal rules for using Facebook:

No bitching. If I’m having a bad day, I don’t complain about it in my status updates. Since I hate it when other people do this, I figure I’d be a hypocrite to do it myself.
No badmouthing. I never badmouth people from work (not that I have reason to; my colleagues are awesome) on Facebook. People who trash the boss, the HR department, the customer or the coworkers risk being alienated and ultimately fired. I also abstain from badmouthing family members and neighbors in my status updates. I do tear into people on this blog, which gets posted on Facebook, but these are longer commentaries that take a critical look at human nature. No hateful hit-and-run one-liners in my updates.
No threats. If you threaten to badmouth someone, beat them up, scratch up their car or flip off someone’s children, for example, you are a bully who needs to get kicked off Facebook. Fortunately, Facebook appears to be on top of the bullies.
Be creative. Most of the time, I just share posts from my two blogs and the occasional amusing quote from my children. Once in a while, I’ll share a clever meme or a rock album I’m enjoying. In other words, I try to share the creative stuff. I’m not perfect, though. Which brings me to number 5.
No excessive posting. I’m guilty as charged. One of my OCD habits has been to post my blog pieces by the ton. I know I’ve been unfriended and unfollowed for it, and rightly so. But everything is a teachable moment, and when I entered a writing and posting blackout in the two weeks before the relaunch of this blog, I found that traffic was just as consistent without all the repeat posts. So I’ve made a conscious effort to dial back the reposting significantly. I still repost stuff, especially on the weekends when I usually take a writing break. But I think I have the frequency down to a trickle.

If I still have work to do there, I’m sure some of you will let me know.

June 27, 2012

Stupid Things People Say on Facebook

On Facebook, I try to conduct myself just as I would in any other social situation. People who go on there to whine and throw around vitriol disgust me, and I confess to a sick enjoyment of sites that make fun of those posts. We Know What You’re Doing is a new site that documents how stupid people people can be on Facebook.

Mood music:

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I often fall victim to the Facebook Unfriend Syndrome: that nagging feeling you get when someone unfriends you. You wonder if you offended the person and want to ask them why they left. It’s a stupid state of mind, to be sure. But having OCD is partly about developing stupid compulsions.

Indeed, I have offended people over things I’ve written in this blog. A close friend got mad at me for something I wrote and ditched me, though she recently added me back. My own mother unfriended me because she couldn’t handle my version of past events. I long ago accepted that I’m going to lose people along the way. That’s life, especially when you’re the outspoken type.

But there are depths I will never stoop to, and We Know What You’re Doing is full of examples.

Take this rant from Jimmy, who hates his boss:

I hate my boss. He cut off my pay cauz I slept in for one day, and now I’ll not have enough to go out for tha 12th :@

Or this one from Anastasia R., who has homicidal thoughts about her boss:

Im getting so mad right now I hate my boss Jay I hope he dies better yet I feel like killin him if you in a bad mood don’t take it out on everyone at the job like wtf its way to hot to take your shit-_- #Piss off

A lot of people captured on this site like to brag about their hangovers. As annoying as that can be, I think it’s better than trashing your boss. But really, Lukey D., I think you might have a deeper problem going on:

fuck it, im hungover again so im going to buy some shoes. and probably drink a lot more.

Mike D. wants you all to know about his new phone number. Call one, call all:

ok folks. New phone number is 07770xxx6xx

This isn’t the first site to aggregate dumb Facebook posts. One of my personal favorites is What the Facebook. I particularly enjoy the responses it captures with the original post, including those from bosses who have been criticized.

The security journalist in me is always warning people to watch what they say on Facebook, because there’s no privacy to be had in the land of social networking. You have to police your own mouth.

There is one unexpected side effect of We Know What You’re Doing: It’s made me feel a lot more tolerant of those posts where people complain about being depressed, alone, unloved and burdened by difficult family members. It sure beats watching someone blather on about their sexual prowess or drunken escapades.

April 2, 2012

‘Break On Through’ Is Precisely The Idea

When my cousin Faith saw the new OCD Diaries banner I unveiled yesterday, she said she immediately had The Door’s “Break On Through” running through her head.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/cJQwnAhXnBk

My reaction was a satisfied smile, because that was exactly what I was going for when I enlisted another cousin, Andy Robinson — creator of the original banner — to make a new one.

When I started this blog, the idea was to come clean about my own battles with OCD, addiction and my past. It was a two-pronged attack: one against my own insecurities, because writing about them always helps clear my head, and the other against all the stupid ideas society has about mental illness and addiction.

By coming clean about my issues, I figured someone with their own demons would read it and realize they’re not alone, and that they always have the option to re-do their lives. The formula worked, based on the thousands of comments, emails, Facebook and Twitter messages I’ve received in the last 30 months.

But I started getting stuck behind a wall made out of my diseases. It was hurting loved ones at home and it was boxing me in as a writer. The more you focus on this stuff, the more it defines the person you are, and that was never part of the mission. So I decided to expand the themes of the blog and punch through that wall.

Break on through? Hell yes.

Expanding the theme is not nearly enough. I have to crush the bricks every day outside of the blog. I’m working hard on that, though I admittedly have a long road ahead.

My life didn’t begin when I was diagnosed and started fighting back, though my quality of life is light years ahead of what it was. I don’t want my life to be about this stuff and nothing else.

That said, my demons will be a recurring theme, as will messages to others fighting their personal battles. Coming clean and breaking stigmas is still at the heart of the blog. But beyond that, it’s a blog about learning to find the joy in life despite the darkness we often have to live with.

The darkness takes many forms — the poisonous nature of today’s political discourse, the way the media portrays our everyday challenges, the way we talk to each other.

With the wall breaking open a brick at a time, all those subjects become fair game.

Things are going to get more interesting around here. You’ve been warned.