I’ve been sorta/kinda back on Facebook for a couple of months and I now have a pending friend request on FB from my mother-in-law. I’ve just been letting it languish in the upper left-hand corner where it’s been the little red flag of menace now for several days. She’s out of town so I know I can let it sit there ……. for now.
This can’t be good.
Can it?
I will now be forced to post only about my family all the time until she unfriends me in disgust.
You see, she shuts down and virtually pouts at any mention of my family or my nephews/nieces and takes our childless state very personally. (Uhm, guess what? Not about you, peaches.)
My sister, who is not on FB, said the other day, “Facebook just seems like another place to get in trouble with people.”
I think she’s probably right.
Ugh.
Your sister sounds wise beyond her years. . .
It’s possible to friend someone and then restrict how much of your stuff posts on their wall. Ask one of the nephews, they can probably explain it better than I.
MamaTod’s right. There are ways to set your posts so that only certain people see them. You may want to set up groups….family, close friends, not-so-close friends. Then you can select who you want to see certain posts.
I say all of this knowing that you can do it. I have never done it though.
Oh, yeah. I know ALL about groups. I’m on it, believe me. MB is now on FB and I was the one who set him up.
It’s just the thought of her ….. being there, you know? MB was on FB not five minutes and she had already nagged him about something on his “info” page.
She’s kind of a boundary-less person, which is difficult for me, a person with very firm boundaries.
Good luck! I “ignored” my MIL’s friend request so she called my husband to ask him if it was in fact me. Umm…the picture of our kid as my profile picture wasn’t a tip off?
Tracey H. — Hahahahaha. Are you FB friends now?
Welllll……we actually don’t have any contact with them at all. She has no boundaries as well and we were always an afterthought. My mom did friend her and it all blew up one day when MIL was posting pictures of their hobbies and my mom asked her if this was why she couldn’t see her granddaughter on her birthday or post a single picture of her. Then my SIL was making beat up threats to her page against my mom and I like we were in junior high or something. Then she got my husband involved and started posting all the things she thought about me on her page so my husband told her what we thought of her…….yeah, totally accept her friend request!! =)
Oh my gosh Tracey H.! You could write a teen novel based on this story! Crazy stuff!
Kathi, I know right?! I mean I didn’t even accept my mom’s request and we are super close until she told me that MIL was asking her for pictures of my daughter and my mom told her to actually show up to family events. Apparently them are fighting words!
Tracey H (can I call you TH? is that okay?) — OMG. That is insane. I’m sorry to hear it. I hate when parents can’t behave like the grownups they are.
Ha on the TH! Back when I worked and had a work email address I always saw it like that since I got married after I worked there and it was a new concept to me. Truthfully I was part of the problem but after 7 years of this woman doing whatever, saying whatever and not caring what the impact on our life was I had enough. The final straw was when our 3 year old had to have a colonoscopy (seriously what 3 year old has to have this done) and my husband had told her about it and then 2 weeks later had to call to ask her if she was coming to daughters birthday party and then give the results of the colonoscopy. MIL was like, “Oh, yeah. She did have that done a few weeks ago right?”. So then when she says she has plans for the birthday party and shows up unannounced one morning I just lost it. Then came all the junior high antics. I can take a good bit of abuse but hurt my kid……
I don’t FB. This (all this) is why.
Well, that, and I think FB is weird and Big Brother-y and is trying to get plugged in to our brains and projected into our eyeballs.
Not really.
Well, yeah. A bit.
Roo — I kinda think that too. I give them a dummy email address, a dummy phone number — literally, MB and I went out and bought one of those prepaid phones just for this kind of thing. I don’t list where I went to school, where I live, any of that crap. I’m always amazed at the people who list where they work, where they live, what schools they attended, what years they graduated.
Huh-UH, FB. You ain’t getting that from me.
Tracey H — WOW. Just WOW. Speechless.
Tracey H… holy shizzle… Jr.High at it’s best I’d say.
I mostly post and run on FB and most of my posts are my photographs and a blurb about them or maybe share an instagram post or two. I don’t stay to read much because I just don’t care what other people had for lunch or what link I need to share to keep elves from peeing in my Cheerios. Google+ is a different story since they are people I don’t know in real life for the most part, I’m very active over there and enjoy the interaction with the people in my circles.
Nice to know I’m not the only one paranoid about the info. I have no information about myself and even have a fake last name that I change every couple of months in case strangers start lurking over names at least mine is never the same. My husband who is all about Big Brother and 1984 thinks I am strange and wonders why I keep the account since I feel that way. If I didn’t have FB what excuse would I have why my house is a mess and dinner isn’t made.