What Absolutely NOT to have on Facebook
 

I have for years beat into my daughter what NOT to post on FB. And actually, I am the "Mom-o-meter" for most of her friends also. I don't think a thing about letting them know to delete items. (comments, jokes, pictures, etc.)

I have found with most of these girls, they just don't have a good radar of what is not appropriate for others to view.

With girls getting ready for the upcoming recruitment season, I thought this would be a good thread. Nothing like being blunt.

I will not start with the obvious (naked pictures).

My first pet peeve:

Girls smoking Hookah... I don't care if they are of legal smoking age. I HATE these pictures.

^^^Is that a SoFlo thing? I have never seen a Hookah pic on FB.

I hate to be obvious, but if you are under the legal age to drink, don't post pictures of it. I would also recommend that if you are over 21 to not have every other picture be you at a party holding a red cup or playing beer pong.

I would recommend not having any pictures of you doing a keg stand or a beer bong. I strongly warn against having any pictures labeled along the lines of "before the black out" or "I don't even remember this."

Actually I would just say to leave the partying pictures out. I have maybe one or two pictures of me with alcohol and I'm older than 21.

I've seen it out West, so not just a SoFlo thing.

Hookah bars & Hookah parties are very popular SoFlo - for some reason they don't consider it "smoking".

Some of the no-no stuff to post around here: smoking hookah or anything else, holding what looks like alcohol, PDAs, generally just doing anything risky or illegal that could reflect back in a bad way on a sorority if you pledged them. Why pledge a girl who could be a risk management nightmare?

But Ceres and Sigma Alpha might! :p

LOL!!

I think we've covered the obvious - don't post pictures or descriptions of yourself doing anything illegal, and don't post anything that might lead people to believe you are promiscuous.

Don't post a bunch of religious or political items. I've seen walls where about 90% of the items are Obama-bashing. I've seen more "Jesus is Lord, repost if you agree" posts than I like to think about it - Jesus ain't the lord of me! Basically, think about the four B's (boys, booze, bank, Bible) and about politics - if it falls under any of those categories, think twice before posting it.

My pet peeves (not that the ones above aren't annoying, but I don't need to rehash them):

1. Wen u tlk lyk dissssss 4 2 looooooongggggggggg (or at all. At a certain age, I guess it's understandable, but it's obnoxious if you're old enough to go to college.)

2. Anything with more than 3 exclamation points or question marks that isn't something along the lines of "OMG!!! Congrats on your engagement!" once every now and then.

3. You in your bikini. I don't know why a) every girl wants her bikini photos on facebook and b) it seems like everyone lives close enough to a beach to get a bikini photo, but people rarely ever look really good in them, and it's just annoying to read people's comments (because they always go along the lines of 1 and 2).

4. Chain messages in a status

5. You flipping the camera off. Is that really necessary?

6. I like the grandmother test (to a point). When it comes to photos, would you show that to your grandmother? If your grandmother suddenly learned how to email, is that how you'd write to her?

I know that facebook's "just for fun" or whatever, but the thing is, it's not anymore. Also, please be careful to clean up your timeline. 13-year-old you should not become your main online representation if that's not a solid reflection of you.

What has cleaned up my kids' Facebooks: my mom DID get on Facebook a couple of years ago. She comments on stuff too. It's easier to keep it clean.

Also, no swearing or vulgar words.

Also, no one wants to see hour-by-hour status posts. No one really cares enough to know when you're at the coffee shop, the library, or frankly, anywhere else you checked in.

I hate people who constantly post depressing statuses. No one loves me, my life sucks, what a horrible day, etc. No one wants to pledge Debbie Downer.

A personal pet peeve: people who spam invite to applications and events. I really dislike when people use their Facebook friends as a client base.

I don't know- my niece showed up at Easter at her Grandmother's house wearing shorts so short and tight I'm not sure how she didn't injure herself when she sat down. AND she brought her boyfriend that thought it would be okay to stick his tongue down her throat while sitting on the couch. So maybe the "What would Grandma say" test doesn't always work!

But I agree about all the "self-portraits" and crazy status updates.

Also not mentioned yet:

• posts that begin with Hey bitches....what's up?
• photos in which the young lady and her boyfriend are laying in bed, obviously not wearing much
• posts that rants about how awful/mean/terrible your parents are
• posts/photos in which you are obviously cheating (answers, text book pages, etc)

I hadn't seen any of those mentioned yet, and I've seen them on FB in the last 6 months.

At the bold: seriously? What the hell is wrong with these people?

Seriously. Girl and guy are laying in bed, snap the self portrait and its obvious that neither is wearing a shirt. There is a growing number of young adults that think anything is appropriate for social media. I don't know if it's the influence of reality tv or what, they see other people putting it all out there for all to see so they figure "why not".

SoFla SoFla SoFla!!!!

Not SoFlo

Filters take care of snoopy moms and grandmothers. :)

Sort of along the same lines, I hate people who post stuff like that or post something vague about something bad happening to them (like "it sucks being in the hospital") so that everyone will comment "Oh, honey, what's wrong? Is everything okay?" and then they respond saying it's something they don't want to talk about. If it's something you don't want to talk about, DON'T POST ABOUT IT ON FACEBOOK! :mad:

Also, don't post about your medical conditions (though I see this more with people that are older than college age). #1 to protect your own privacy/keep your insurance company from using your posts against you and #2 BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR GROSS INFECTION OR YOUR GROSS DIGESTIVE SYSTEM PROBLEMS!! :mad:

Just put the drink down. It doesn't make you look more fun, it just makes the picture unusable in a whole bunch of contexts. And putting it down makes a whole variety of sins forgotten to the past. You might be wasted out of your gourd, but if you put the drink down, stand up straight and open your eyes, 20 years later you might be able to fool your kids.

And the vague posts insinuating the end of the world seriously bug the hell out of me. Sharing seriously bad news on Facebook isn't the worst thing to do (you can disseminate to a lot of people who might care without having to rehash it over and over again), but share or don't share. There is no middle. Going off on a tangent, this goes along with my utter distaste for newscasters saying something is a parent's worst nightmare. Because I bet you I can come up with something worse. And sometimes, the parent's worst nightmare is getting your kids to eat carrots. Seriously? Just saying.

Vaguer yet: "Oh well. It happens." "Maybe next time." "It's ok." Those kind of statuses BUG ME LIKE YOU CAN'T IMAGINE.

I'm not saying your statuses have to be unicorns pooping rainbows, but perpetual frustration or attention-seeking is downright annoying.

Or just make your facebook and what you post private so nebby sorority girls aren't dissecting it. The majority of the time when I click on a college-aged woman's facebook, it's completely private. Why are we discussing what "should" and "should not" be on there?

1. 40 zillion religious posts. It's okay, occasionally, but it can be annoying when it's too much. I have friends that I grew up with who have gotten religion HARD and 3/4 of their posts are about Jesus. Talking about church activities if fine. Constant evangelizing is annoying.

2. Talking about politics. Delete it before recruitment. It's going to annoy someone.

3. Any posts that are too depressed. If you've got a ton of mopey posts, delete them before recruitment.

Don't do like one of the girls from my daughters high school and post all about your pregnancy scare!!!! Got her cut first round.

My pet peeve: PROFILES THAT AREN'T PRIVATE.

I'm sorry, you have to be stupid these days not to have your profile on complete lockdown to only your friends, not even friends-of-friends. Otherwise, your activity, photos, etc. is accessible to basically everyone. Or you just have really bad judgement, in which case I don't really want to pledge you.

If your profile is NOT private, you should untag anyone from your group photos that will come along and post an inappropriate comment, or anyone who has a public profile...because I certainly judge people by the company they keep.

Also: passive aggressive posts are passive aggressive.

ETA: related to tagging. You should set your privacy settings so that all tags have to be approved by you first. Then no one goes tagging you in drunk photos or at bars before it's too late.

That's why I said "make what you post private." If a girl who has grown up with the Internet doesn't know how to do that or check for that, she's too dumb for a sorority.

People should also be aware of what others post on their walls and/or restrict viewing or posting access to walls. A PNM can have a squeaky clean-looking Facebook profile, but if a friend posts something profane or inappropriate on some level, that's going to send a pretty loud and clear message about the company the PNM keeps.

Also, beyond Facebook...Tumblr is an interesting place. What a PNM posts and reposts says a lot about her.

It used to be easier than it is now. I admit to having trouble figuring out how to restrict posts and needing someone to remind me how to check my profile. :/ Then again, I also don't post things that people shouldn't see. I don't even let people check me in places, and I have to approve anything that gets posted with me tagged in it (i.e. if someone tags me in a photo or status, I have to approve it. That was a setting I did figure out--no idea how to get back there--and it's awesome).

I also deactivated my facebook during recruitment to avoid having anything go wrong on the facebook front. Obviously, I have a hard time recommending anything I did during formal recruitment as a viable suggestion.

I am so glad tumblr wasn't around when I was pledging. Not that my facebook is connected to tumblr at all.

http://i46.tinypic.com/5pj6g.jpg

I understand why people recommend shutting the whole thing down, but I think it misses an opportunity. If I were going through recruitment today, I would seriously think about using my FB to market myself. I'd make sure that I had pictures of myself doing my best high school activities. I'd have picture of myself and my swimming team mates at State. I'd include pictures of some of the philanthropy work we did for National Honor Society and Science Club. I'd include pictures of my JETS team. (Lord, I was a geek.) I'd include pictures of the really awesome float we built for Science Club for Homecoming. I would also join any pages for any other groups that I'm thinking about joining in college. (Not sororities, but theater, professional groups, whatever) I'd make sure to comment in a positive, upbeat, sweet way on those pages.

I know that all went on my resume/recruitment application, but having pictures makes it more memorable.

Same goes for Twitter and Pinterest!

As a girl from Pittsburgh, I LOVE that you said "nebby!:D"

I see your point. I don't think this is a bad idea, but at the same time, I feel like some girls are still better off not going down that road. You have to have pictures of all of these things in the first place to make this work. If your main high school activity was testing how much alcohol you could drink before you vommed, this is a bad plan.

Also, I hate the idea that you can learn so much about someone through facebook (you didn't say this; others have said it to me). If you read my facebook, all you'd learn about me is that I'm an admin of a Dark Shadows page, do Harry Potter roleplay and play quidditch. It's useful information, but in actuality, it's a VERY small part of what I do. I just don't like facebook and don't use it for anything but what's only facebook-based. If you actually had a conversation with me, you'd learn all that and more.

^People DO that??? I mean, if you gotta pin sex positions, you're doing it wrong.

Didn't they get rid of the pro-ana stuff like this on Live Journal? Pinterest should probably do the same.