Here's another kind of post that I see a lot of. As opposed to the ones that say nothing at all, this kind says something, it's just impossible to tell what it is.



No idea. I've seen this guy's stuff for months (this is The Weatherman, by the way), but he's never mentioned any dietary restrictions before, and doesn't say what he ate now, why he did it, or what he's suffering. So, why is he telling this to the world, if he knows the world won't understand it?

Seriously. Is this just bad writing (he wants people to know, but doesn't realize that he hasn't explained himself)? Or is it like the guy playing his car stereo far too loudly, for the benefit of one or two people, without realizing that everyone within a 10 car radius of him is hearing it too?

@Facebook etiquette: If you get it figured out, please let me know as well.

I definitely will, because it just got more confusing. The Weatherman just posted a picture of his dinner. So I can no longer distinguish him from The Guy Who Posts Pictures Of His Dinner that way. In his defense though, I think he made this dinner himself, which makes it a little different. On the other hand, I don't know for sure because he isn't clear about it (doesn't anybody know how to explain anything in a way that makes sense???)

If people behaved like they do on Facebook before Facebook existed.

Translation left to right.
“I am in a relationship with Kirsten Johansen”

“I just got out of the shower”

“The Tonight show is awesome!”

I'll have to post that on Facebook and see how many recognize themself.

From the Weatherman:



Darn, I was going to use that as a lampoon, now I've got to come up with something lamer.

Try Twitter...should be loads of material

I've been afraid to try Twitter.

But he's back to what he knows best today:



Hmmm, you really telling me that Twitter is lamer than this?

This one's not idiotic, just cryptic. But a good example of the bad style on Facebook:


You see a lot of posts like this, where you have to scramble to figure out what someone is even talking about. Something in the news, obviously, but who wants to go digging around for the story just to see whether or not you agree with a comment that doesn't really say much in the first place?


Another one:


Absolutely no fargen idea what this is talking about.

In some ways, the incomprehensible ones are more annoying than the ones that I know for sure don't say anything. Because sometimes people do want comments. One guy just posted a bunch of music videos, with one or two word introductions, then posted this after he didn't get responses to any of them after a day or so:


He wants a response, but what is there to say? He hasn't really expressed anything coherent enough to reply to. And now he feels snubbed that he didn't get anything. It wouldn't make him feel any better to tell him the truth.

But it's not all bad. I do have one friend from college, who works in an ER, and sometimes posts (unintentionally) funny comments overheard. Here are a couple:



This is fine. Its meaning is clear and it's interesting and entertaining.

Let me take a stab at this. He heats the house with a wood stove. But the woods he's cut is too long to fit into the stove properly (at least the log he had didn't fit in with the one that was already in there). And if you don't get the airflow right (amount of air flowing into the stove), the wood doesn't burn...or alternatively, the heat doesn't circulate the way it should (or both). So his house is cold and he needs blankets. Least, that's my interpretation because his complaint sounds very much like my experiences having grown up with wood stoves for heating.

Also he's a Monty Python fan (see The Knights Who Say Ni).

That could be it. But if you can't get the log in at all, what difference does the airflow make? And why buy wood that wouldn't fit in your stove in the first place? And why not cut it smaller? Even translated, this post still looks like Leroy Brown (a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone).

The "blanketses" references still throws me. It starts off like a Tolkien reference ("Blanketses, my Precious!"), but then morphs into Monty Python, and I don't get either one. You burn witches, not wood, right?


I bet I could encrypt a message in the Vigenere cipher, and still have it come out clearer than a lot of these Facebook posts.