Chain Notes are the Work of the Devil

The only thing worse than seeing something really annoying come up in your news feed is seeing that exact same thing multiple times in your news feed. While this is a rarity for pictures or video, it is all too commonplace for notes on Facebook, which have replaced email as the go-to form of self-quizzes, superstitions, and dilvuging of secrets.

While all age groups are susceptible to such methods of arcane trickery, adults are predominantly the subset that uses such notes the most out of all my Facebook friends. They maintain an intrinsic belief that the mere act of being on Facebook guarantees them an audience for which they can pass on uninteresting tidbits of their personal life and receive comments, “likes”, or even complimentary wall posts.

If you’re lucky, the one friend that first posts a note will be the only one, and the chain will die a quick and fortunate death as their note disappears from everyone’s news feed. However, there is the unfortunate feature of being able to tag others in notes; originally intended to let people know you may have mentioned them in your note, it is now used to guilt and pressure people into copying the note and filling in their own answers. Once a number of people have been tagged in a note, it’s only a matter of time until several, if not all of them, start posting it themselves, hoping to cash in on the fountain of attention the original postee now bathes in.

Your feed will soon become overwhelmed with short quizzes about a person’s favorite pizza topic, how many electronic devices are in their house, and if they would be willing to eat or drink something disgusting for $1000. Think I”m exaggerating? Look no further than a note posted by one of the adults I am “friends” with:

This is extremely interesting and relevant to my life

I mean, really? “What is the last heavy item you lifted?” Why the hell would anybody care about that? I mean, I see some level interest in favorite restaurant, or the popular “If you could have one superpower, what would it be” but heavy item that you lifted? Or even worse, the color of your cell phone? When did the color of the device become a more interesting quiz question than the actual type of phone? Wouldn’t that be a little more relevant?

Since it’s a Friday, I’ll let the guilty parties that post these horrible creations off with just a stern warning. If you really want to expose intricate, meaningless, and ultimately boring details of your life with others  go to your local watering hole and have a few too many with your closest friends so that the door to the vault of secrets swings open. As a person who knows you through two other people, I don’t feel like reading about your favorite type of pen or the last magazine you read. And I doubt those two other people are dying to know that information as well.

Put Down Your Pitchforks, Morons

A few days ago I wrote about the opportunity to confuse and scare off adult users with the new Facebook layout that was coming down the pipe. Unfortunately, what I didn’t predict was the fact that many of these users wouldn’t leave Facebook, but rather stay on the site and bitch about the layout endlessly, even making up erroneous claims and half-truths to support their arguments. See, actually leaving the site and maintaining close, personal contact with friends and family would require some effort. Doing nothing but clicking twice to join a group and another two times to post “I hate the new Facebook! It broke my computer!” is much easier.

This morning I decided to peek my head into the “I hate the new Facebook layout” group and see just what kind of arguments people were making. Now, to be fair, there are some aspects of the layout that just flat out suck. Wall posts are now denoted by “Poster > Postee”, which is confusing as hell the first time you see it. The left sidebar also doesn’t keep the application filters constant at all times, even going so far as to not have Events and Groups most of the time for me. You can workaround this by searching for the application in the search box, but it was still a terrible design call.

However, some of the things people are complaining about are just false or results of their ignorance. I will not attempt to debunk three of them:

Case Study #1 – The Guy Who Pretends to Know What He’s Talking About

I swear this person must be a user where I work, because the twisted belief that a computer’s hardware can somehow be adversely affected purely by glancing at a website runs rampant at my current place of employment. You view Facebook in a web browser. The web browser is the application that uses processor cycles and physical memory – if anything was slowing down your computer, it would be a bloated web browser. Still, neither IE or Firefox or Safari or Chrome or Opera will utilize anything close to your computer’s amount of memory these days.

Oh yeah, one more thing: the act moving a few images around and changing the Cascading Style Sheets is not going to affect your computer. If the old Facebook didn’t eat your PC’s memory, this won’t either. Stop bitching about nonsense and trying to look like you know what you’re talking about because you used a sweet simile in your argument.

Case Study #2 – The Girl Who Has All Her Beach and Party Pictures Open to the Public

Not sure what’s worse here. The fact that this girl is posting something personal on a social networking site’s wall-to-wall, or that she thought that all the other users couldn’t see it before the new layout. First of all, News Feed has been around for almost over a year now. That wasn’t part of the new layout change – so most likely, everybody could see your “personal” posts before, they just didn’t have the heart to tell you. Secondly, how about using a private message if it’s really that personal? I’ve seen people who have been on Facebook for a few hours and already recognize the difference between a wall post (public) and a message (private). New York is in serious trouble if this is what they’re churning out these days.

Case Study #3 – The Person Unaware of Privacy Settings

To be fair, great privacy control wasn’t available as a feature when I initially joined Facebook back in early 2006, but they’ve taken great strides since then (especially with the initial News Feed backlash) to let you control who sees what information. If you don’t want anybody seeing your pictures, videos, or even your favorite movies and books, you can control that information in privacy settings. And in the off-chance this troubled person is reading this entry, I’ve even taken a screencap of where to find the privacy settings section on the site:

Was that so hard?

Look – there it is! It’s one click down from a top-level menu option. And get this – that top-level menu option is called Settings. You know, the option that you look for in any program or web application when you want to adjust something, like privacy. Oh, and lady? If you don’t want somebody seeing your personal pictures, you might wanna start by not having your kid as your profile picture and posting in groups that are gaining several hundred thousand members. Just saying.

I’m starting to wish that high schools, colleges, and public libraries would offer courses on how to effectively understand and use social networking sites. If you’re going to complain about the new layout, fine – just make sure it’s something legit. Just don’t get all up in arms because there’s now these things called “pokes” – your ignorance of a feature’s existence before doesn’t justify your right to whine now.

Newsflash: Nobody likes your applications

My feelings about the vast majority of applications on Facebook are no secret to anyone. For every one useful one (Last.fm, Food Friendzy), there are a few thousand that are meant as simply ways to kill time, keep people on the site, and click misleading links taking them to a sponsor’s own site. Normally, I wouldn’t care that much, as the type of people who are application-happy typically aren’t people whose profiles I view on a consistent basis.

However, even though I avoid these forsaken profiles at all costs, I’m still affected by the onslaught of spamming applications. How? The much hated application invite. Most have enticing or interesting titles these days (Will sent you a drink! Click here to claim it…) that hook people who love to strengthen their friendships via trinkets displayed on a web page or believe that pictures of drinks on their profile will somehow drown out their real life blues.

One of the biggest source of application invites is someone I worked with last year. During my employment there, all the older folks were aware of Facebook but didn’t really care about it. Then, just like every office, one person took the plunge and started infecting everyone. Soon, I had invites for numerous people in the office, some who I only emailed one or twice during my time there.

Since I’ve left, one particular ex-coworker has stood out amongst the ranks as becoming a prolific Facebook user, perhaps even an addict. At the time, I never would have pegged this person as an application adder, but in the few hours between initially scouting his profile for this post and actually writing this post, this has been his application activity:

My Eyes....the goggles, they do nothing

Notice not one wall post, friend request acceptance, profile update, photo album, or event in the mix. No, this person’s entire Facebook existence is dominated by sending sea creatures and playing with a SuperPoke! Pet. The names of the guilty party as well as the unfortunate souls that he spams application invites to have been blacked out for privacy and dignity purposes. Just because you send me 16 application invites a day doesn’t mean I hate you. Yet.

Since the initial wave of applications, Facebook has taken limits to restrict spam invites, even giving you the option to block all invites from a certain application or even all invites from a friend. Currently I try to avoid the latter, as I don’t mind NCAA March Madness Bracket invites or even bumper stickers. However, the former (blocking all invites of a particular app) is a flawed option, as application adders move like a herd of buffalo from one application to another, grazing upon the newness and slightly-improved-but-same-as-before functionality. They don’t stick with one application long enough for you to develop effective counter-application controls.

So, in an effort to stamp out this stampede of application invites and gifts, I beseech you: stop using frivolous applications and sending invites for them to me. Instead of sending someone who you haven’t seen since high school a fake flower, go catch up with them in person over a beer. Then go to a florist and buy them a real flower. Or not, because nobody buys anybody a single flower randomly in real life. In fact, use that as a rule of thumb from now on. If an action would make you look crazy to your friends in real life, it’s not okay to go ahead and do that action on Facebook. Common sense.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Facebook, like all social networking sites, is merely a chance for otherwise ordinary, boring people to  show off and grab attention for themselves. This goal is accomplished through several of the site’s inherent tools, such as photo albums, videos, status updates, and most importantly: relationships. Even Facebook itself realizes this, and will provide a one-line teaser in your news feed when a friend’s relationship status changes. Human curiosity is always peaked when all they see is “Joe  is no longer single” or “Amanda and Mike have ended their relationship”. Such statements, which would be appropriate in previews for an upcoming teenage soap opera, entice a person’s friends to immediately comment on the affected party’s wall or status to find out what really happened.

Since very few college and high school students are married or in long-term engagements, they find it perfectly normal to see a fresh batch of relationship changes every week. After all, dating has not been perfected (at least not as of this post), so there’s bound to be some trial-and-error along the way. Also, it is common knowledge that only losers post real relationships on Facebook anymore; you’re only cool if you’re straight but in a fake relationship with another person of the same sex; without the opposite sex able to see your relationship status, you add an aura of mystique to your otherwise suggestive profile.

Unfortunately, the whole perspective on relationships changes when you throw adults into the mix. See, they’re the ones who are supposed to be in stable relationships. They are the ones, when they hit the upper 40s and head into their 50s, that aren’t supposed to be in-and-out of relationships once or twice a week. And to be fair, most aren’t. But sadly, the widespread adoption of Facebook amongst this age group has managed to catch a few exceptions to this otherwise understood rule.

Take, for example, this woman who found out her husband was divorcing her over the site. Now wait, it gets better. She didn’t even manage to read the relationship update (or receive the notification email) – a friend called her to express their condolences and ask for more information – another victim of the one-line tagline lead-in. Furthermore, somebody else had already commented on her now ex-husband’s status basically trashing his five-minute old ex-wife. The woman, oblivious to the concept of “the other woman”, was hurt that somebody else on the site would comment on what was once her perfect marriage.

While being let go by your spouse over a short status update is pretty bad, it gets worst, as all divorces do, when children are involved. Normally, the former husband and wife will sit down with their kid and explain their justification for seperating and what will happen next. However, that’s not always the case, especially in this fast-paced age of status updates and gardening applications. Some kids just have to find out about their parents’ marital woes from the same site that they just posted pictures of their latest beer bong on just hours earlier:

Some kids, however, aren’t as lucky. Take Molly for example. She noticed the broken heart in her news feed indicating someone dumped someone else, but sadly found out it was her own parents. Fortunately for her, a few application gifts and wall posts smoothed over the ugly details of the seperation process, but not everyone is as receptive to the news:

Looks like someone should call home more often

This is a prime example of how all of Facebook’s attention whoring tools aren’t for everyone. If you’re having marital troubles, you might want to spend a little less time on social networks meeting new fake friends and sending each other pokes and a little more time in counseling or talking to your lawyer. And, as always, think of the children. The only thing more humiliating than your parents getting divorced and not knowing about it is having everyone else find out first and post about it on your wall. News Feed’s a bitch, son.

Know Thy Enemy

One of the harder aspects of determining whether or not one of your parents are on Facebook is the act of correctly identifying them. Since adults are more likely to have no profile picture (or one of their car or favorite vacation spot), knowing if the person you’ve searched for is actually your mom or pops can be trial and error, especially if you have a common last name. Luckily, baby boomers follow a distinct set of patterns when using social networks, all of which can help you identify whether the Jane Smith you’ve found is actually your mom or just another random person (who you can then friend, even though you don’t know them).

1) Photo albums composed entirely of pictures of themselves

Since they probably can’t stand not having pictures of themselves up on the site while some of their friends do, boomers will take a regular or digital camera, turn it around to face themselves, and take several glamor shots at various angles. Most of these pictures will be in relatively poor lighting and all of them will include hilarious facial expressions as they try to look serious yet relaxed as they try to photograph themselves blind by holding a somewhat foreign piece of technology backwards. Also, boomers will proceed to throw in terrible quality images of themselves from their high school or college days that were scanned by their $50 home scanner, so that their old classmates who now roam the People You May Know Savanna can pick them out without hesitation.

2) Constant status updates

Boomers missed the instant messaging train and have yet to catch the Twitter locomotive, so they make up for it by treating their Facebook status as a hybrid between the two. Since this is a boomer’s only outlet to let their friends and acquaintances know what they’re doing, the short updates are bound to be as attention-grabbing as possible. This habit intensifies if the adult in question is single – after all, it is their responsibility to make their social life seem as interesting as possible to their now wedded friends. Additionally, since the majority of them don’t IM, entire conversations will take place in the comments of these updates. I’ve seen what appeared to be a moderated debate over the proper way to hold a knife after someone updated that they cut their finger while chopping vegetables.

3) Application Binge and Purge

Boomers weren’t around on Facebook before the arrival of applications, so they have no recollection of the idealistic paradise garden that the site once was. Thus, they see applications as an integral part of the experience, and will add (and occasionally remove) no fewer than 3 applications a day. Worse, they will then proceed to send invites for these applications to everyone they know. Some adults I know on Facebook should have a job QAing these applications because they use them so damn much. To make matters worse, each of these applications has to be displayed proudly on the person’s profile. Yes, I use Bumper Sticker too, but I don’t have it sitting front and center next to my wall to inform the world of my superficial interest of low quality .jpegs.

4) Chain notes

While we all did our job about six or seven years ago stamping out the chain email rampage from our relatives, their intent to spam you with horror stories and misleading prophecies of true love have resurfaced since their arrival on Facebook. It’s amazing that the people who manage to keep a job, pay their mortgage, and raise one or more kids succumb to the logic that a psychotic axe murderer will instantaneously know if they didn’t tag 25 people in their last Facebook note. The number of chain notes sent by a boomer is dependent on how much free time they have to spend on Facebook – so if they have recently joined the ranks of the laid off, prepare for a storm of “25 Things About Me” and “The Sentence Game”.

5) Profile picture of their Cat

This is THE tell-tale sign that a middle aged adult woman is on Facebook. I was once told by a very wise man that women love their cats just as much as their own children, if not more so. Moreover, if you poll any Best Buy worker, you’ll find that the chief justification for women purchasing digital cameras is that they can share pictures of their cat with their friends and family. It’s not unusual to open a woman’s My Pictures folder and find album upon album of cat pictures. My own family computer’s primary hard disk has about 4 gigabytes of space that I will never be able to reclaim as they are taken up by cat pictures that have been deemed “absolutely necessary”. This trait can also spillover into #1, as entire albums of cat pictures can soon appear in their profile.

While not foolproof by any means, this short list should have you diagnosing when you have a baby boomer infection on your social network in no time flat. Those who do not meet the above criteria are probably not worth caring about anyway, as they are one of the few chosen ones amongst the boomers that are immune to the social networking bug.

Opportunity of a Lifetime

Big news today, ladies and gents. Facebook has begun rolling out their new layout design, which means that over the next few days, all of the site’s users will get to experience it – permanently. While you will be initially unconvinced by the change (as you were with the last one), this redesign is a gift from God for those of you who have parents already on the site.

While baby boomers have slowly but surely embraced technology, their capacity for legitimate change of the technology they’ve grown accustomed to is still rather low. Changing the layout of shortcuts on their desktop or preventing their favorite program for loading at start-up can unfurl a wrath of a thousand bitchings upon you, even if you were simply cleaning up their computer. I’m all too familiar with this, as even the change to the Back/Forward buttons in Firefox 3 caused numerous complaints and a month of discontent in my own house.

Thus, the layout change that we now stand at the threshold of is indeed a blessing from above. If you are the primary technology support person for your parents, you will most likely be informed when they experience the change at the most inopportune time, such as just before midnight on a Saturday night when they log on to check out new pictures of their coworker’s cat.

When this initial support call arrives, you have a few options. You can sell them on the fact that this sort of thing “has been happening a lot recently” and that it’s not even worth it to relearn the site as the crazy developers behind it enjoy playing sadistic games with their users’ minds. Another option that may be worth trying if your parents are particularly technology-agnostic is that the problem lies with their computer and web-browser, most likely a virus. You can then request that they stay off the site until the next time you’re home, which will buy you a few weeks or even months.

If the above plans fail, simply fall back onto taking advantage of their lack of experience using the site. Tag them in a series of undesirable pictures, such as Saddam Hussein, the Wicked Witch of the East, or, my personal favorite, Ursala from the Little Mermaid, who was both a bitch and overweight. Explain that this new “version” of Facebook allows you to claim pictures of anyone without identity verification. Their online ego is still young enough to be completely shattered by these invalid visual sources, which may be enough to drive them from the site altogether.

Whatever path you may choose to undertake, this opportunity should not let be allowed to pass by unused. It’s not every day that Facebook completely overhauls its layout – well, at least not yet.

Part of the Problem

One of the great yet creepier things about Facebook is the “friends of friends” category. Basically, I can meet somebody once in a class, become friends with them on Facebook, and then have access to their friends’ albums that have that person tagged in them. This is assuming that the privacy settings for these friends of friends haven’t been changed from their defaults, but let’s be real: the type of demographic to post flagrant photo albums of themselves and their friends have yet to come across the concept of social network privacy, probably because it wasn’t spoon fed to them in their university’s orientation seminar.

Most girls probably wouldn’t care about a couple college guys they kinda sorta know browsing their events, pictures, and videos. However, what many fail to realize is that friends of friends can also apply to family members. So, if you’re friends with your cousin (who you may tag in an album or invite to an event) and your mother is also friends with your cousin, you’ve turned Profile Island into Profile Peninsula.

This being said, there are some events and pictures that are never a good idea because, well, they make you look like a fucking idiot. I will now attempt to critique several of these.

Exhibit A is this lovely event header that I managed to find when signing onto Facebook tonight:

Apparently, this is the first person to ever turn 21 years of age, so we do have to forgive her for the use of capital letters and foul language; I would be excited too if I was the first person to reach such a milestone. Note the astute choice of opening this glorious shindig up to the Global network, so that everyone within six degrees of this young lady on Facebook can be informed that she will be “[getting] shitty and [making] some bad decisions” that night.

Upon second glance at this event, I realized I may have gone too harsh on my critique above. I previously assumed the title was a reference to the state of consciousness this individual will be at precisely 2:00 a.m. on Thursday, March 12, 2009. Now I realize that this could merely be the beginning of an act of community service, where the young lady will attempt to experience empathy for the growing number of homeless and unemployed in this economy. The last phrase, “make some bad decisions”, may refer to reliving a past life as a Wall Street Executive or prospective home buyer who wrote checks their tush couldn’t cash.

Exhibit B is a photo that I’m sure that him and his friends all love, but makes you look like 1) a lightweight 2) a moron and 3) a waste of your parents tuition to the outside eye:

Exhibit C, I would dare say, is even worse than Exhibit B for two reasons. One, the person so politely showing his ass didn’t make it to a bed. Hell, he didn’t even try. And second, there’s no alcohol in the picture to explain why this guy has taken the plumber possum position on the ground. It looks more like he suffocated on paint fumes while remodeling then attending a wild party.

These are just part of a very small sample size of the comedic and blackmail goldmine you may be providing to third degree “friends”, resourceful family members, and prying employers. The best solution? Keep your friends up to date, removing any excommunicated former friends, roommates, lovers, etc. That way, you only have to worry about your close friends using such tactics against you. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than nothing.

Risk Management

While your parents are most likely the last people you would tell about Facebook, others will eventually send them a request to sign up on the network. This development can be a problem, as you won’t know about it until it’s too late. Therefore, we’ve compiled a list of My Mom is On Facebook’s (MMioF) Most Wanted to help you focus your preventive measures on.

1) Their coworkers

Aside from family and extremely close friends, your parents’ coworkers are usually the most influential people in their life. Offices are home to stories about everyone’s kids when they were babies, group lunches filled with gossip that would rival Blake Lively, and numerous in promptu watercooler discussions about who had the more interesting weekend. Unfortunately, this comradery also spills over to the social networking world. In smaller businesses, there is usually one person who introduces social networks such as Facebook to the office. This person is also known as the infection, because once the Facebook cat is out of the bag, that cat proceeds to run amok, marking its territory on everyone else in that office. Soon, it becomes taboo to not know what Facebook is or have a Facebook story at lunch.

The infection soon becomes extremely potent and antibiotic-resistant, as employees now gain previousely hidden insight into their colleagues’ social lives. What was once just a story about an awesome weekend fishing at the lake is now verified by pictures. What a female coworker may have once told you was “just a few drinks” becomes a visual documentary on just how much of a lush and slut she is after two Long Island Iced Teas. The professional mask that employees must wear at work becomes transparent on social networks, and their coworkers are always the most interested to see whats behind it.

Risk Level: High (Raise to Very High if source of infection is attractive 20-something female in an office of 35+ men)

2) Your extended family

While you may not want your mom or dad on your social networks, your cousins, aunts, and uncles have no such reservations. If an aunt or uncle contracts the infection from their office as seen in #1, it can very quickly spread to his/her brothers and sisters. This situation also has a double risk factor, as if your aunt and uncle are on Facebook, your cousin’s social life has already been compromised, so they’ll have no problem compromising yours as well. The combined might of your mom’s sister and niece are more than enough to peer pressure her into registering. After all, they have to be talking about something for 3 hours over the phone. Right?

Risk Level: Medium (Raise to High if multiple female cousins post numerous pictures of your parents and wish to tag them)

3) That one person who loves to send Event Invites

Those with at least three days of experience on a social network know the different between real event invites and joke ones. Real events includes your friend’s house party on Friday, gatherings on your campus, free pancake night at the library – whatever. Fake events include “Lost my phone (again!!11!) Leave Numbers”, National “That’s What She Said” Day, and events marking the start of a new season for your favorite TV show. Sadly, baby boomers without such experience cannot discern the former from the latter, and will go through the registration process if they believe they have legitimately been invited to a party or gathering. My own mother’s justification for joining was to attend the event, “George W. Bush’s Last Day In Office”.

Risk Level: Medium Low to Medium High, depending on your parents’ political ideology and social skills. Automatically raise to Very High if your parents are currently completely anti-Obama.

4) Your own laziness

While you don’t show them Facebook directly, parents often seek out the nooks and crannies of a computer that nobody ever really uses or visits. Seriously. My parents seem to successfully find .dlls and config files for old applications while performing a Windows search, but then can’t find the shortcut for Windows Live Messenger in the start menu. Think back to your last visit home. Did you delete your browsing history last time you used the family computer? If not, they might have already found Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter and are on their way to creating their very own profile to torment your once immune social life. Did you ever save any of your instant message logs on your home computer (maybe at some point before college)? What about bookmarks – are they public or private? If you don’t know for sure, you have to assume the worst. Congratulations, you may have created your own worse enemy.

Risk Level: Low to Medium, depending on how obsessed you are with electronic privacy and covering your tracks

While there are many other sources of risk or possible contamination to deal with, these are the big ones that deserve your attention first and foremost. Although tackling all of them won’t be easy, it’s worth the time and effort now to save your independent, socially varied career from prying eyes.

First Contact

It’s one of those moments where you’ll never forget where you were or what you were doing when it occurred. Much like hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes or terrorist attacks, the first email message notifying you that your mom (or dad) wishes to add you as a friend is one that is likely to inflict temporary paralysis, panic, confusion, anger, and eventually, fear. How could this happen? You were being careful, weren’t you? You played a game called “Just the home page” when you visited home, careful not to let your parents catch any lingering glimpse of that “Face Book” site.

Yet, it still happened. You now have a potentially life altering decision sitting in that plain text email plea to be a more than parent and child, but Facebook friends, the ultimate covenant of union and connectivity. What’s the right decision to make?

First of all, realize that all hope is not yet lost. After all, you’ve been using email and social networks for years now, and that experience is your primary advantage over this rookie. Depending on your parents knowledge of computers and technology, you can pass the blame onto the site. Explaining “that’s not exactly how the site works” and then providing a convoluted solution can have them heading for the logout button quicker than a nun in a strip club.

Unfortunately, parents tend to friend request more people than just their children, as they actually use the site to keep in touch with old acquaintances. When you soon become the only person to not receive the request because of “site issues”, your credibility goes the way of Rihanna and they become only more intrigued with what you’re hiding.

A more useful solution is to shift the blame onto your email system; namely, the spam filter. If there is one thing more mysterious than emocore and body piercings to parents, it’s spam email. The confusion stems from the fact that many parents have yet to discover the joys of Gmail, and instead are using their ISP’s crappy POP3 service, their corporate mailbox, or Hotmail – all mind numbingly bad options for spam avoidance. Simply explain (while stalling) that the first invite got lost in the filter, go to your Privacy Settings and block their name from access to your profile, and then ask them to send another invite. When they’re unable to find you again in search listings, they’re more likely to blame their own inexperience with the site than your intervention – leaving you un-friended and credible.

The last option is to go undercover. This method only works if you know your parents have made a Facebook, but have not yet put you in a check situation by sending that friend request. Upon obtaining the critical intel, change your display name and profile picture ASAP. Cartoon characters, those South Park imitation avatars, and pictures of sports athletes are all adequate. Parents can’t comprehend a person not accurately representing themselves online, so when they perform a search for your name, they won’t even think twice to check aliases, screennames, or nicknames. You’ll be in the clear.

Above all else, remember that the best defense is a good offense. Constantly monitor your parents’ computer usage when you’re home. Start dropping comments in passing when you talk to them about fraud and criminals on social networks. And, if you control the computer situation in your house, block the sites altogether. Instilling fear in you worked so well when you used to talk about sex, right? Why not use it here?