DISCLAIMER: Let’s pretend for a moment that we don’t all know that Twitter is solely a Tequila-soaked frat house for status messages. We all know certain people reveled in the joy of declaring the deliciousness of their sausage sandwiches when status messages were a mere glimmer in the eye of Myspace (yes, even before Facebook made sweet love to us all).
Pretentious people have always loved status messages. Most notably, it gives them a completely socially-acceptable forum in which to discuss the minutia of their existences. But the love definitely doesn’t stop there. The following are three huge reasons that overly-, often unnecessarily-descriptive status messages are popular among the tragically hip.
Status Messages Are Irrefutable Proof that You Are Busy.
As previously mentioned, the more pretentious you are, the busier you must appear at all times. A major barometer for your busy-ness is your status message. Did you only change it once today, and is it still about what you have for breakfast? Well, then you probably haven’t done much SINCE breakfast, right? If you change your status message every time a new assignment lands on your desk or every time the woman in the blue sweater on the North wall laughs at the giraffe-themed YouTube video her boyfriend sent her and interrupts you from sending that important e-mail to your boss (or getting your fourth Tetris in a row), everyone will know you have places to go and people to see. Thanks to the ability to comment on your own status messages, you can increase the appearance of being busy exponentially by responding to every friend comment or “like” that appears to give additional details. Just don’t forget your iPhone when you take a bathroom break.
The More You Explain, the Less People Can Argue.
If you are really descriptive about what you are doing at all times, no one can ask you to explain yourself (at least not without looking like he/she is trying way too hard). And the point of being out there on social networking sites is to guarantee yourself a place to have the last word. The more detailed your status message is, the more believable it will be. If you just say, “[Insert Name Here] is at home,” you’ve missed the train to the Big Time. Everyone can be at home, after all, and there’s nothing particularly interesting about it. To guarantee that everyone can get a mental picture of you immediately (and one that will hopefully stick with them for at least the next 30 seconds, when you post another update), you should say, “[Insert Name Here] is at home and can’t believe she has to tell her daughter to stop yelling at the donkey … AGAIN; the frustrations of parenting are endless!”
Status Messages Give You an Acceptable Place to Illustrate Why Your Kids Are Better and Cuter than Anyone Else’s Kids.
In real life, if you endlessly prattled on about your children and how cute they are, repeating everything they said and did every moment of every day right down to describing the shape of their first official “poop in the potty,” you’d be told you were annoying. People might also walk the other way when they saw you coming … after a while. However, when you brag about your children and your parenting abilities on the Internet (“[Insert Name Here] successfully explained that Mr. Snuggles went to Jesus”], anyone that publicly declared irritation is pretty much seen as a bitter child hater. And that’s a step down from someone that kicks puppies in the face or never went through a unicorn phase. On social networking sites, you get extra points for having children and mentioning the struggles you have with them on a regular basis, and you’re probably more likely to get into heaven, if it exists. You can then safely enjoy your superiority over your childless virtual friends in the privacy of your own home – or through comments on their status messages about eating dinner at midnight over the kitchen sink – without being called “bitchy” … at least not to your face. Note: You have to know that these childless friends are doing the same thing to you in reverse … but thankfully, you don’t have to care either.
If you want to rub elbows with the elite, you need to hop on the rumbling status message bus. Just don’t expect anyone to talk to you in the midst of transcribing life passing by through the window into 140-character bursts.
1 comment:
This totally made my day. I'm friends with a ridiculously pretentious guy on facebook and he makes long, rambling status updates about how he's writing poetry, working on his novella, listening to classical music, etc.
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