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Facebook: Boys and Girls play differently

Danny & Alex on the See-Saw

Danny & Alex on the See-Saw (Photo credit: leekelleher)

In the title of this piece I use the terms boys and girls; but what I am really talking about is men and women.  Something about Facebook etiquette though makes me think of a school playground, so the title seems appropriate.  What is Facebook etiquette?  I don’t think any of us know yet, as social media is a relatively new forum.  It has been my experience that men and women behave completely differently on social media. As a performer I meet a lot of people and I used to friend just about anyone within reason.   I have learned the hard way that I can’t be so open.  Out of my 2700 friends, and I could have many more if I wasn’t so picky, the vast majority of negative activity has come from men.   I have had to deal with the following:

  • The Semi-Stalker – A male user who will comment on nearly everything, including completely mundane posts.  A true semi-stalker is someone who doesn’t know me well and who I may have met for an instant or is just someone I share multiple mutual friends.  Yet this virtual stranger will become fascinated by everything I post.  Most of the time, these men are in a relationship or married which makes their behavior even more unsettling.  I can’t help but picture them at their computer ready to pounce on my latest update.  Their behavior is unnerving and most Semi-Stalkers end up getting kicked off my page.
  • The Full on Cyber Stalker – A male user who goes beyond the realm of Facebook to harass me.  I have had several men exhibit stalking behavior engaging negatively on this blog, my twitter account and in my regular email.  The worst was someone who did all three and even set up two fake OKCupid profiles to torment me.  I had mutual friends with this person, he lived in New York City and was also a performer.  I thought he would be OK, but he got so crazy he resorted to threats of physical violence.  My crime:  I had kicked him off my page when he made a sexually explicit comment on my wall in a political discussion.  At the time it happened I foolishly told him why I was deleting him in angry email.   Now I simply delete/block without comment.  The less I engage the stalker the better.
  • The I want to tell you Missy –  I’ll post anything political and a man will respond with an extremely long diatribe.  Most posts from unfamiliar men are condescending and include disrespectful language.  They act as if I don’t know what I am talking about, haven’t bothered to do research or am acting purely from emotion.  These men obviously don’t know me well, and I don’t think they have ever been published anywhere.  Everything I have written for the Huffington Post goes through an editorial process.  If I use a stat or fact I have to include a hyperlink in my article to a non-biased a source.  I am not exactly a lightweight and this isn’t my first time at the political discourse rodeo.  I never started a fight with them, and I never posted on their wall.  I don’t see the point in getting into it with someone who is diametrically opposed to me politically.  The discussion is going to go nowhere, and will end up being a huge waste of time.  So to my more Libertarian, Republican or conspiracy theory friends I usually just leave well enough alone.  Everyone can post whatever they want.  I don’t have to engage in a Facebook war with them because I don’t agree with their point of view, instead I just ignore their rants.  Although I have kicked people off for posting racist articles or absolute nonsense.   I get plenty of detractors and would be critics on my Huffington post articles and on this blog.  I don’t need it on my personal facebook page.
  • The Negative Commenter – Again usually a man who I don’t know well, maybe I met them at a comedy show…I don’t know.  They will just post something negative for reasons unknown to me. Recently I was really frustrated with my memoir and I posted something along the lines of “man this is hard”.  Some guy I barely knew felt the need to write “First World Problems” as a comment.  I thought it was inappropriate especially since I didn’t know him well and he knows nothing about my life.  I quietly deleted the comment and he un-friended me.  I was happy he saved me the trouble.
  • The Pervert – I don’t feel like I need to describe this one, but I haven’t had a woman give me a problem like this yet.
  • The Bully – I once posted “Congratulations to SAG-AFTRA on our historic merger“.  This seemingly innocuous post ended in a comedian I knew calling me a cunt.  He then got on my wall with an alter-ego profile to try to keep fighting.  Again, I had no history with this man other than doing a paid show for him once.  We had mutual friends.  He had posted anti-union sentiments on my wall in the past and I had politely told him to stop saying something like “Look I come from two unionized parents and I am in two unions you aren’t going to change my mind please stop” he persisted.
  • The Scolder – No matter what I post, including things as controversial as “Being self-employed is difficult” the Scolder will point out to me that I’m being too negative. They are ALMOST ALWAYS men I barely know.  No one is always chipper and happy all of the time, and some people like to vent.  I would never dream of making some sort of judgment like that to a person I barely know.  It seems to me like just another way to put me in my place.

Are Facebook pages free speech zones?  I don’t think so.  Should people post long drawn out political rants on other people’s pages?  I would say no.  If they start the fight, they should expect to finish it.  But why start it in the first place.  In any given year I kick off dozens of men from my Facebook page, sometimes two or three in a day.  In contrast I have kicked off exactly one woman, and in her case she was doing all of her aggressive behavior via private message.  She was not posting anything on my wall. In my experience when women engage in political discussion they are ironically less likely to get emotional.  They don’t talk to me in a condescending manner and they certainly don’t call me a cunt.  To put it simply.

It’s not that all of my male friends on Facebook cause problems for me, but nearly all the problems I have on Facebook involve men.

I can’t twist my reality to conform to a politically correct narrative where men and women act the same.  I enjoy political discourse  and have plenty of close friends who don’t always agree with me.  I don’t mind getting in real debate, but that is rarely what happens.   I have male Facebook friends who constantly post inflammatory things and I don’t see them getting the same types of reactions.  But I will admit, I don’t know what a typical male goes through. Would men also post repeatedly on the wall of a man they barely knew?   I would love to hear men’s opinions on this.  Do men who barely know you pick political fights with you?  Is this a problem?  Do men engage in the same type of abusive behavior such as stalking, harassment and negative posts with other men?  Do women do it to men? I would never dream of engaging someone I didn’t know well in political discussion especially when I can tell they are already extremely passionate about their point of view.  I would never take the fight to someone else on a personal page like that.  Why do they feel the need to take it to mine?  As I have said to many  of my male ranters, ask yourself this question.

“When was the last time Juliet Jeske posted on my wall?”

The answer would be never….so please knock it off.

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Dating after Divorce: How NOT to use Social Media

facebook

facebook (Photo credit: sitmonkeysupreme)

I would love to write that post-divorce I handled my online social media profiles with grace, restraint and dignity, but that it would be a total and utter fabrication.  What I did instead was to vomit my personal hell and torment over the internet, and was unapologetic about it.  In some ways I regret it, but not completely as I was mad, extremely mad at my husband who had been lying to me for years and living as a closeted homosexual.  I had nine years of sacrifice and struggle to keep a relationship together that was ultimately a fraud at its core.   The torrent of emotions was overdue and I had this new forum called…FACEBOOK.

This type of  social media is relatively new to everyone and correct Facebook etiquette, manners and rules haven’t been firmly established.  However I have learned quite a bit from my mistakes and I would love to share them.  I didn’t do everything on this list, but from my own and others mistakes I have discovered the hard way what is just a bad idea.

1. Don’t use your Status Updates to seek and destroy – Never post a status update hoping that your ex will see it, or as a direct attack against your ex – they might see it, they might not, but you will just make most of your friends concerned with you and your mental health.

2. Get rid of old Comments – Remove any and all comments that were made on a the profile or photos or your ex of a loving, kind or playful nature.  Comments such as “There is my sweetie!” or “I love my husband” can come back to haunt you when starting a new relationship and the new boyfriends stumbles upon these little notes.   It can also cause problems for your ex and his new relationships.   Basically it is confusing for everyone involved and if you can easily remove things, remove them.

3. Learn to love the BLOCK Feature  – If you are on horrible terms with your ex or your ex is using Facebook to attack you or taunt you personally…BLOCK THEM.  When you block an ex they can’t see you or anything you do on Facebook.  They can’t even see a comment you make on a mutual friend’s wall or even see a photo.  The only way they can see you on Facebook is if you appear in a photo of a mutual friend and the mutual friend is also in the photo.  Otherwise you are invisible to them.

4. Don’t look up their profile – Blocking them helps make this easy, but don’t be tempted to look up your ex’s profile.  You are usually better off not knowing.

5. Don’t assume it’s about you – Also if you see something on an ex’s profile that says something to the effect of “I am so happy right now in my life I can’t stand it” don’t assume that your ex posted it there to piss you off.  He or she may have, but you have to assume they are not using Facebook as a weapon of your personal destruction.  That is why the BLOCK feature is so handy.

6. Don’t use friends walls for your grief –  If you are going to vent, use your own wall to do so.  Or better yet, think twice about it and don’t post!

7. Don’t create fake accounts to spy – I never did this, but I know people who have.  Sometimes I think there might be a good reason if you have children with your ex, or some other type of pending legal matter.  Otherwise when you have to create phony profiles to see what is up, you are entering place called crazytown.

8. Don’t broadcast new relationships – There is nothing wrong with changing your relationship status, however I did make the mistake while rebounding of putting too much out there about my new and short-lived relationships.  There  is nothing like telling the universe “I found love again!” but you may not get what you are hoping for.  You can scare off the new partner, start a war with your ex, and is it exactly worth it?

9. Beware of Twitter – Don’t follow your ex on twitter unless you have children in common with them.  Also don’t look at their tweets and if you can, lock your own account so that your ex would need permission to see your tweets.  Also be discreet about what you put on twitter, if you have friends in common your ex may know everything you are writing.

10. Shut down your Facebook account temporarily or don’t have one in the first place.  Facebook allows you to shut down your account for as long as you want and start it up again with the same friends and contacts.  I did this on multiple occasions to give myself a break and I found it somewhat wonderful.

Basically you are bound to be slightly insane after a divorce, and you are better off not making matters worse by publicly pulling everyone else into your drama.  Easier said then done, but you will get through it.  Eventually social media will just be another way to talk to friends from high school, not a way to exorcise your demons.   Things will get normal again, it just takes time.

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