Social Media Tune Up

If I never hear the words "Facebook is broken" again, it will be too soon.  In fact, that sentence may be featured somewhere during my mother-in-law's memorial. 

The other day she phoned Kevin to let ME know that her facebook is broken.  Cue the script: "What is broken?"  Because sometimes it's just that she's not seeing what she wants to see.  Sometimes it's because she has disconnected the wifi (she did NOT, just ask her).  Sometimes it's this new issue:

She completely logged out of facebook and completely denies it.  The social media fairies did it during the night.  She did.not.do.it.  Yet, here we are.

Also, in a new twist, a new facebook profile for her showed up a month or so ago.  I looked into it and eventually reported it as fake, via her account and mine.  Facebook said "Nope, it's not fake." and I moved on with my life. With the logging out of facebook comes confirmation that she has done it before and probably somehow created that other account.

But I digress.  Back to the Facebook is Broken.  After a few questions to ascertain what in the name of Where's Waldo she was talking about, I realized that I hadn't tuned up her facebook in a while.  I told her "I'll work on it at home" then poutingly sat down at the computer to see what's happening.

Like before, she had liked a bunch of random pages.  I made a list this time:

The Indian Consumer

Simply Recipes

Crazy World

PEACHY

America's Funniest Home Videos

Tried and True Recipes

Then I went through her friends list again to make sure she hadn't friended someone sketchy.  To my relief, she had not. 

She complained that she couldn't see a specific young cousin's posts.  She is the daughter of the sister who passed away a year ago.  They barely know each other but it's important to her so whatever.

But this made me think about her timeline and I reviewed it again.  She has friended all the younger cousins,  most of which she doesn't know other than by name or association. (second and third cousins to us. We don't even know them) I hid all of them so then she could see the people who really mattered to her.  You know, like her actual kids and grandchildren.  

Worst of all, for me, is she had fourteen notifications and nine messages.  I don't touch those even though it is so frustrating.  We've explained eleventy-hundred times that when she ignores those, it means she's ignoring people who have possibly said something to her.  But she persists in not grasping that and I persist in ignoring those notifications.

Then finally, scrolling through all the faux news posts that cousins share and hiding topics so she can enjoy her facebook and not feel attacked by her own family. 

Even after all of that, her timeline was still cluttered.  Now though, it is by her elderly best friend.  She's like the person who is new to facebook so she's liking everything and commenting on everything and sharing twenty things an hour and playing all the games.  It's exhausting.  I had to temporarily hide her from MY timeline because it was All Her, All The Time. I told Kevin the next time I see her I'm going to slap that phone out of her hands and shout "NO!" with a wag of my finger.

But yeah, the facebook is broken.  I have added an event to my calendar (I mean actual calendar this time) to tune her facebook once a month.  Maybe then we'll avoid the facebook being broken.  Probably not but let me cling to the delusion for a little while.  She'll still manage to disconnect the wifi or log out of social media.