…Except when it’s really, really annoying.

The internet has made everything seem trivial. Our entire lives can be shared and updated in seconds and can be edited or deleted at will. Waiting to share life-changing news with someone face-to-face was once an exciting event but ‘ZOMG! Just got engaged! ILY 4EVA’ has a delightful immediacy to it. The major drawback here is that instead of cracking open a bottle of champagne and celebrating with you, your five billion Facebook friends just click ‘like’ and keep scrolling down to the pictures of cats in tights.

In short, through the constant barrage of status updates, tweets, Tumblr posts about every mundane thing in life has led everyone you know to make the same conclusion; we’re just not that into you.

We’re not into Candy Crush, or Farmville or any of the other stupid games you want us to play and we’re not into the stupid events you keep inviting us to. Sorry to say it, but The Battle For Middle Earth is never going to happen.

We’re also really, really, absolutely not at all even remotely interested in cats as you are. Please for the love of God don’t share every single misspelled picture of cats who desperately want a ‘cheezbergr’ that finds its way into your newsfeed.

The only cat in the world I don’t hate.

As a general rule, people who are truly your friends think you’re pretty great. Instead of hounding them with undeniable proof that you’re actually far from it, you’re better off being more selective about the things you say and share and making sure your social media accounts reflect the best of you.

Great things only become great because someone took time to think, plan and care about them enough to perfect it before unleashing them on the public. It took Homer years to write The Iliad while he could have been out playing golf or something with his mates, but it was worth the effort considering we still read and discuss it 2000 years later. If Homer had merely logged onto Facebook and written ‘Imagine if Achilles killed Hector!? How pissed off would Patroclus be? LOL’ we probably would have scrolled right past it.

Granted, it only took two days for Martin Luther King Jr to write Normalcy- Never Again (more commonly known as the ‘I have a dream speech’) and change the lives of millions of people, but you sharing an anonymous quote about the power of sunshine isn’t really helping anyone. Especially considering it’s the 8000^th quote you’ve shared that day. King’s speech was so powerful because the likes of it had never been heard before and have rarely been heard since. Quotes on social media are very much an example of the ‘less is more’ rule.

I can almost –almost- stomach the mindless sharing of every meal you’ve ever eaten in your life. It means you’re not one of the people who shares those “challenges to repost” images. You know the ones-the pictures about how your mum/dad/brother/sister/best friend’s flatmate’s sister is the best or, call me callous, the ‘how many likes for this kid’ putting flowers on a grave or amputee athletes etc.  I care about these people as much as anyone can care for a complete stranger but I detest the ‘let’s see who likes this’ caption, glaring at me like some kind of gauntlet being thrown down by the karma gods. Well F**k you, I’m not playing your game. I’m not reposting your chain letter. If I am cursed with bad luck for seven years or wake up dead tomorrow then so be it; I can’t say I wasn’t warned. But using pictures of sick kids and intimate family moments of people you’ve never met to get likes is far more despicable than me choosing not to join in.

I know for a fact that I’m guilty of almost everything I complain about, but I’m a pretty firm believer in the old “Do as I say, not as I do” thing. My friends already know I’m annoying, so I’m not too concerned about being blocked from their newsfeeds, but the rest of you have time to prove that you are wise and wonderful social media users whose every word is as powerful as Homer’s.

– by Blaire Gillies