So, I was looking through my FB feed and I saw yet another instance of an awkward post made by one of my relatives. My sister did one of those Buzzfeed Quizzes, and her result had the phrase "you have no fucking clue" in it. There are two responses from her friends followed by my relative's awkward, conversation-ending post. My relative's post was, and I quote: "WHY DO YOU HAVE TO POST THINGS WITH THAT WORD IN IT, YOU WEREN'T BROUGHT UP THAT WAY. GOOD THING YOUR PARENTS AREN'T ON FACEBOOK IT WOULD BREAK THEIR HEARTS." Though we were raised not to use profanity at home, our parents have become more lax as we grew up. I've used similar language in front of my parents before and haven't seen any kind of reaction to it. My sister is in her second year of college and is an adult. I am seriously considering talking to this relative about this, sending her a message the boils down to "You aren't her mother, she's an adult, stop harassing her." Anyway, I figured this would make an interesting topic for discussion. Feel free to share your stories of awkward relatives on Facebook, advice for my situation, or whatever.
I'm lucky. All the members of my family I have on Facebook are pretty damn cool. I posted a weird crime story about someone trying to have sex with a sliding board once (I always post weird stories like that.) And my uncle, who is married to the aunt I consider my mother posted something back about giving the slide in his backyard a try. (Most people would probably find that awkward, but I thought it was funny.) In your situation though, I'd probably ignore it. You know your parents better than they do, and in this day and age, everyone gets offended by anything you say. Better to keep quite than start a family ruckus over something little. My problem on Facebook is with people I know (Or thought I did) posting a bunch of homophobic crap. A friend of mine from high school made a comment on the Campbell's page about the new commercial with the two dads feeding their little boy soup. (I thought it was sweet, but apparently, according to this friend the commercial made him ill and he feels it shows a lack of morals. Because two people, regardless of gender, taking care of a child and spending time with them shows a complete lack of morality!) My daughter is a lesbian, (Having some identity issues as well, but we're leaving her to figure that out for herself.) and while the guy's opinion bugs me, I can ignore it easily enough. However, I really don't want my daughter to see these types of posts and think that I share the same opinion, or even condone it. I also don't want her to think I'm going to ignore everyone whose opinion is different than my own. Still haven't decided what to do about it, but for now I'm still friends with him.
I've actually been having a growing issue with this of late of my own family being dramatic. Warning this isn't just an annoying funny story, but a bit more serious (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Basically I'm fairly active (and verbal) on facebook because the way I see it facebook is basically the page to express myself and my thoughts. I don't go up to other people on it and try to start anything mind you, I just happened to post a lot on my wall in general. This includes a lot of geek stuff, dark humour, speaking out against social justice, atheist posts etc (I also post stuff supporting things like LGBT rights, but I highly doubt that's the issue here). And I've got around 7-8 people (I lost count) of people from Iwaku on my friends list too so they can confirm this. However, most of my extended family doesn't seem to appreciate some of these posts. What exactly about it though? I have no idea. Reason being they have never confronted me and went "Anthony! I don't like ________!", instead they go all passive aggressive. Over the course of a few years now they've consistently talked behind my back with stuff like "I don't like what he's posting", "I need to stop reading it or I won't love him any more", "Have you seen the kind of stuff he posts?" etc. And note the reason I know this is because they are often reporting this stuff to my Mom, expecting her to take action on it. But thankfully the most my Mom does is talk to me once in a while saying "You know the family isn't liking the offensive posts you're making" (well there was one exception where a family member of ours in secret police made Mom think I'd be an ISIS target for taking part in draw mohammed day. But that was more Mom terrified for my safety, not her trying to censor any point of view... And if your curious the picture ended up staying). And every time I ask her what offence post she can never answer, the family isn't even bothering to say what the offensive stuff is. So even if I cared to censor myself for their sake I wouldn't even know what to censor, which conveniently gives them more room to be passive aggressive. Now, none this had actually been leaking into real life yet... mostly. There was a funeral I went to a few days back where I saw them all, and the one's Mom mentions making these complaints were very distant (granted it's a funeral. No one's of truly stable mind at those. Though in case anyone's suspecting I was reading things badly cause of the death, this was a relative I barely knew. So the most down feeling I felt was from the environment). But not distant in general, distant at me specifically from what I could tell. They all huddled in big groups, but it usually took about 20-30 seconds after I joined one of them before they'd end up splitting off elsewhere, consistently. And there was one instance specifically where they are casual for a bit, noting my moustache (it was for Movember, I shaved it off now) but almost immediately after the look on their face (eyes specifically) suddenly switched to... Anger? I think? Regardless that look lasted for maybe a second or two and then they quickly rushed off without a word. Eventually I just ended up sitting by some row of chairs and killing time on the phone, and spending time with my little cousin whose almost three until everyone decided to leave, because it seemed apparent that no one was interested in talking. Note I've noticed passive/avoidant behaviour like that at other gathering, this recent one was just the most evident/obvious of them all. And note unless if they're all holding some bit of information from me this is all because they disagree with stuff I say on facebook. On a more positive note, just a few hours after that I ended up seeing another side of the family, and they were nothing but thrilled to see me. We did some investigative game thing where you had to solve puzzles and make it into the next room on a timer. That was fun.
Used to post a lot of shit that riled people up. They never could argue against it other than 'that's racist' 'that's what hitler thought' etc etc. Despite the facts being right in front of them. Usually the responses were from my super-conservative grandmother with things like 'God bless you' and the similar responses. Even if it was a completely mundane post similar to 'Had breakfast with the wife cause we got early' and it's the same. "We love you both God bless hope jesus is in your lives". It's the worst with video game posts. Super fucking glad I removed myself from Facebook.
I've had older relatives ask me not to swear or to stop posting my political views (not opposed to views in general, just the ones I support.) I simply said that my Facebook is a one-to-many forum of personal expression where I say what is suited to myself first, the majority second, and individual values not at all, and if they want to unfollow me and keep in touch via email or phone or some other one-to-one forum where it is reasonable to tailor what I say for their preferences, then that worked for me. I'm pretty sure the only relatives who follow me are my mom, siblings, one aunt and a couple cousins, and I have a pretty big family. I tag people I want specifically to see something, and private message a lot. Conservative relatives demanding censorship doesn't have to mean a lot of drama
This actually reminds me I forgot to mention something on my previous post. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It should be said that I did actually post statuses (a few times actually) where the basic message was "I've gotten complaints about what I post. This is my profile, I post what I want. If you don't want to see it feel free to unfriend me". Most Recent (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Got some complaints about what I post (again), so here's a reminder on how that stuff works. If anyone here takes offence to my content that's fine, everyone has the right to their opinions and beliefs. However, I'm not going to alter what I say or post on my own personal page simply because other's want me to. In fact the vast majority of the stuff I post online is strictly said on here or among the company of close and trusted friends. This is not stuff I bring into day to day conversation unless if the other person chooses to open the door for it. If that's not enough for someone though, and they don't want to see my posts then just go ahead and unfriend me. I'm not going to get offended by it.
Usually the closest I get to anything controversial is just posting daily observances that annoy me, like drivers rounding blind corners in my lane or the super rich neighbourhoods I do some work in putting forth zero decoration for Halloween, or how emojis (they're emotes, you cunts) are text cancer. Other than that, I only ever got in one serious argument with anyone on Facebook, and that's because he was being a bit of a psychotic asshat towards anyone who didn't share his views on the refugee crisis immediately after the Paris attacks. It's just not worth getting into touchy shit on Facebook, especially if it could fuck your relationships with friends and family. I am only on Facebook to keep in touch with people back home, everything else is secondary. If someone is annoying, I just unfollow them. Easy peezy.
I think the only amount of awkward I deal with on Facebook is that I have one or two relatives who think its their job to get into everyone's business. You know, excessive liking of everything you've ever posted no matter where it is, bringing up Facebook posts at obligatory family functions, posting responses to shit that's not any of their concern on people's pages (even if they don't know said person and are responding because they stalked our posts there). That kind of thing. The nosiness level with that crowd is x10000.
Oh yea, it stopped a few months ago (just watch me jinx it by saying that) but my Mom used to be super obsessive over commenting or liking stuff. Such as she'd constantly pull me aside while at home and go "Look it's _______ birthday today, make sure t wish them one on facebook or it's rude" or "Make sure you like and comment on every single birthday wish the day of, or it's rude". Sometimes she'd demand I post in stuff I was just tagged in too, because 'ignoring them is rude'. I think it stopped after say the 3rd or 4th time I had to explain to her that I have things to do other than facebook and may not get to this stuff immediately. And even if I did a ton of people never do this stuff, and no one ever takes it as rude.
I blocked an uncle because he would post T&A posts of barely legal coeds if you know what I mean. Eternal bachelor firefighter who has niece he friended is just creepy as hell! Now if only my other uncle would have friended me with his drag page!
My Aunt-In-Law that I swore up and down was and is a fucking Hagraven was on my Facebook once. She asked me why I had made the four kids on 'Stand By Me' as my cover photo and demanded to know why I didn't list her as my family on FB. She then messaged my friends asking them about me and I finally had enough and blocked her. She created four accounts to harass my friends after that.
That one relative you never knew you had that just comes out and says "I'm your uncle" randomly on Facebook. My response? I mean what else could I say? Darth Vader had a whole lightsaber fight with Luke before he came out with the truth. I didn't get squat xD
Well to avoid these awkward moments...I simply just refuse to add them on Facebook hahaha But if that doesn't work I just set them on the highest restriction setting possible so they can't see what I post :P...despite the fact that these days I don't really make a lot of status posts...
There is the one time my grandmother had herself a mental breakdown and that my brother was a communist nazi just because he had some silly troll nonsense on his facebook profile. o___o Otherwise I have never had family say weird things at me. I do occasionally have problems with FRIENDS being stupid. But I resolve that problem by blocking, ignoring, deleting, and removing anyone that is a pain in my ass. >:[ I do not tolerate stupid drama bullshit, nor do I want to see things that piss me off or upset me. I have full control over what I see and read, and I use it. 8D
