This past Saturday was the first home football game at the University of Michigan, (GO BLUE!), and after the big win there seemed to be a flood of maize and blue covering my Facebook feed.
After any big event in our lives, or any event in general, there is one thing that must be done as a follow up: upload pictures to Facebook. Some may call it social media obsessed, but these are just the facts of life and the world we live in. So please embrace the tags, likes, and comments because Facebook really is a crucial part of our lives.
Now before you climb aboard your high horse and pout about the negative affects that social media has on our life, I think it is so important to acknowledge all of the good that it can do for us too.
Social media helps bring awareness to many issues that would otherwise have gone un-noted. We all remember filling a bucket full of water and ice and dumping it over our heads last summer to bring awareness to ALS. Facebook also allows you to stay connected with friends and family that you might not otherwise see. One of my cousins lives down south and although I don’t get to see her children often, I feel as though I have had the opportunity to watch them grow up via Facebook.
But, this is not an article about the pros of Facebook, not at all actually. What we all came here to discuss is the real life struggles that accompany uploading pictures.
Let me break this down for you:
Time to get creative
You’re back at school and ready to let everyone know how fun you are and show them all of the cool trendy things you’re doing. You log onto Facebook to create an album that will undoubtedly hold all of the pictures that you will one day show your children to prove that you weren’t always lame and wore mom clothes. That’s when it hits you that you need an album name that will live up to all of the pictures you are about to share. Do you play it safe with a simple title, Sophomore Year? Do you try and incorporate your Greek letters in a fun and flirty way? Or do you blow all of your friends out of the water with some inspirational rap lyrics? I like to make money, and get turnt.
Seeing doubles
You found the perfect lighting, your hair isn’t doing that weird thing where it flips out on the ends, and nothing is in your teeth. Could it be possible that this is the best set of pictures you’ve ever taken? Only one problem, there is about 23529 of them and they are all selfies and starkly similar. You sort through them all having to constantly choose between soft smile, duck lips, and peace signs. It’s a hard life, but someone has got to live it.
To filter or not to filter?
It’s a good picture, don’t get me wrong, but it would look better with a nice sepia glow to it. There comes a time during everyone’s uploading concourse that you are presented with a choice: to filter or not to filter? Would black and white complement all of those empty handles of Kamchatka in the background? I think the answer to that is always yes.
I swear it’s not my fault
Facebook has this fun little feature where it detects whose face are in what pictures and automatically tags them in them. It’s a great invention except for the fact that your friend Nick looks scary similar to your ex-boyfriend Jason, and Facebook clearly cant tell them apart. It’s getting a little old receiving frantic texts from your friends, “You’re not getting back with Jason are you, why is he getting tagged in all your pics?” Answer: absolutely not, I cannot date someone who doesn’t support my love for Dylan Sprouse, and you should know that by now Facebook.