Why do some people post everything to everyone on Facebook?

Facebook has made EVERYTHING about ME ME ME AND ME again. It is a way many choose to make sense of their routine, to attract attention they never had. People want the spotlight on them as much as possible and if there is no other way to achieve that, then posting everything short of your toilet trips is a way to tell the world – HERE I AM LOOK AT ME!

I totally agree with @ZEPHYRA ,while I think it might be a good tool to keep in touch with long distance friends and relatives, it has become more like the way @ZEPHYRA described it,I know there will be those that argue FB is the best thing since sliced bread,I had a FB account for about 2 months a couple of years ago,I found it just like ZEPHYRA described it I deactivated my account and left never looked back.

Yes, i agree with @SQUEEKY2 about keeping in touch and exchanging wishes, news and the odd photo, but this thing about sharing, everything that goes through your mouth, every possible feeling, location, purchase, relationship etc, is becoming a show of sickness. People no longer value privacy and discretion.

People use FaceBook in all sorts of ways. Unless you yourself have showed up in unwanted pictures, in which case tell them you don’t want that, it’s not actually your concern.
Just scroll past.

People behave in a lot of ways that I find annoying, if they aren’t harming me I ignore or overlook it. I’m sure I behave in ways that others find annoying (I bet I’m doing it right now!) but if I’m not harming anyone they can ignore or overlook it.

I am not the keeper of anyone else’s conscience, nor am I the Supreme Behavior Monitor.

Just scroll past. That won’t hurt their feelings.

Because they are under the delusion that everyone really wants to know every itty bitty little thing about them and what they do :)

Facebook is a little scrapbook of my life. Why are you my friend if you don’t want to see my pictures? Is anyone forcing you to be on Facebook? It would be very rude of you to say something to your friend.

I agree with @canidmajor

I replaced facebook with non-digital human interaction a while back. I’d recommend it.

No one is forced to use Fecesbook.

People post there because they can, and are a little narcissistic. People read this stuff because they are voyeurs.

It’s all voluntary.

Best two answers to this familiar question ever, @Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One and @elbanditoroso.

I agree it’s annoying when people post that they took a nap or just did laundry. I scroll past, for the most part. Once in a while, with people I know I can joke with, I will say something silly about their post. Otherwise, I just keep it rolling down….....

I have some that write religious stuff, post what they might think are inspirational photos, all kinds of crap. I just roll past, thinking maybe one day they’ll post something that I am interested in, which is why I don’t choose to block all of their stuff.

Do they simply not know how to use that cute little gear button that gives everyone on Facebook the option of limiting the audience to people who might appreciate seeing all of these other people? It only takes a second or two to click it and pick an appropriately appreciative audience.

That isn’t always available. I post things from my phone or my iPad, and selecting a specific group isn’t possible. My friends don’t fit into neat little categories or groups, and many have cross pollinated.

I assume it’s for attention and approval in an big insecure world. My guess is that if their fiends never responded to those kinds of posts, they would stop posting everything.

The posts that I don’t understand are the “Having so much fun hanging out with my BFFs.” Hmm, having so much fun, but on the phone, disconnected?

I really don’t understand it myself. I share my funny kid stories and random observations, but personal stuff is almost non existent, and negative personal stuff is totally non existent. .

There are a couple of friends and two family members who do this. The reasons they do so are different.

If we FB users are annoyed by their posts, then isn’t it up to us to manage our news feed? That’s the way I look at it. The best option I’ve found is to hide their posts from the news feed. That way, I can pull up their profile at my leisure and skim through their posts.

There are also a few friends who subscribe to “news” sources, daily stuff like horoscopes and quotes, and play games where their posts show up in my news feed. Those are easily blocked on my end never to be seen again.

Terrorists sure like it. :(

The problem I’m having is that I don’t want to block all of the posts from these friends, just the ones that have pictures and information of people who we don’t have in common. I see that as akin to having a face to face talk with a friend and they are discussing their husband’s boss’s children’s in-laws. It’s not likely that that would happen IRL, because that friend knows that I don’t know those people. I’m always very aware of what and to whom I’m posting.

Not sure why some are saying you can’t post just to specific people on the phone. It works the same way as it does on the computer, although the interface looks a little bit different. When you click on FB on the phone, and you are about to enter something into your status to post, at the very top of the screen is a dialogue box that asks you who you want to see your posts. It’s very easy.

Scrolling is fine, if you want to scroll and scroll and scroll. When all 5 of these people are doing this, with multiple posts, there could be 40 or 50 of them in a day.

What is the harm you might ask? I’m guessing that most of the people in the photos have no idea that their pictures and information about them is being shared by hundreds (or maybe everybody if they’re public) of people who don’t know them. At least in my family, there have been several nasty divorces, and I’m sure the ex-spouses don’t want their business shown to each other. Even people who don’t have bad life experiences probably don’t want total strangers knowing about them, and because they probably don’t know that the photos and the information has been shared with strangers, they might not even know to ask the perpetrator to stop.

Facebook can be a great way to share information among family and friends that know each other, but it becomes scary, annoying and possibly dangerous if people share things willy-nilly. It’s really a shame because it’s really easy to simply share stuff with the people that are in common, and hide the stuff from people that are un-related in any way.

I don’t necessarily think that these people are doing this because they want to be Me Me Me, they just don’t know how to use the gear button to limit the audience. My neighbor across the street kept closing her FB account down. I asked her why and she said it was because she didn’t want one of her nasty ex friends to see pictures of her new baby and her family photos. I had to explain to her that she could use the gear button to limit the audience to whomever she wanted. She didn’t even know about that. Now she uses it all the time and she doesn’t have to close down her account.

I guess I’m lucky, because my relatives don’t seem to do this, it’s only casual friends. I’m not in any of those pictures, but I’ve seen just about everybody else who has ever been in a wedding or had a new baby. People I’ve never met, and never will meet.

I don’t know how to use the gear button to limit the audience.

@Dutchess_III Whenever you go to make a post, right below the dialogue box where you type in your words and paste in your pictures, there is a big button right next to the button that says Post. It has an icon that looks like a Gear. Before you hit Post, if you click on the gear icon, it brings up all of the options of people to whom you can post your stuff to, including Friends, Public or Custom. I always choose Custom, that way you can select only the people you want, not everybody in the whole world and not everybody on your friends list. It works the same way on the phone, except the gear option is at the top of the dialogue box.

When you click on the gear icon a dialogue box like This opens and that is where you select whom you want to see your posts. I always choose Specific People or Lists. When you click on that (as opposed to just Friends, which sends everything to everybody in your friends list) you just pick the people you want, rather than everyone. It’s really easy and makes it a better experience for the people on the receiving end.

There is an “I don’t want to see posts like this” button. Just click it. Nobody can read your mind.

@janbb If you do that, it pretty much cancels everything, including the posts that I do want to see. There is not a distinction made for posts that are about people that have no relationship to me. So doing that is virtually the same as blocking or unfriending.

@Kardamom Well, those are your choices: hide individual posts, unfollow, or unfriend. The first two options allow you to go visit that person’s page whenever you do want to see what they’re up to. Or you can talk to the friend whose Facebook choices (and they are that person’s choices, not yours) about how they can make your Facebook experience more enjoyable.

I really don’t understand why people complain about this sort of thing. We seem to get one of these questions periodically. Is it just a rant?

We cannot control other people. We can only control the choices we make for ourselves.

@dappled_leaves I liken it to receiving lots and lots of junk mail from friends, who I otherwise would expect only to receive letters and pictures that have some relationship to me. Sometimes I feel like the postman has left someone else’s mail in my box, because I have no idea who any of the people in the pictures are. I try to be very mindful of what, and to whom, I post stuff on Facebook. I don’t like to bombard people with stuff that has no relation to them whatsoever. My friend in Philadelphia probably doesn’t care that my neighbor’s sister got married, and no one, except my co-workers want to see pictures of our holiday work party. My best friend doesn’t want to see pictures of my second cousin’s baby shower, and my cousin in Las Vegas doesn’t want to see pictures of my best friend’s brother’s vacation. None of those people know each other. There’s a gear icon next to the post button for a reason.

@Kardamom Sure, but that’s how you use Facebook. Other people use it differently. I’m guessing your friends don’t think of their outgoing posts as “junk mail.”

We all know that we can limit who can see what we post AND what we see of other people’s posts. Whereas you say, “There’s a gear icon next to the post button for a reason,” someone else might say, “There’s an Unfollow button for a reason.”

@Kardamom you are wanting people to accommodate you on Facebook . It ain’t going to happen.

@jonsblond But yet those same people do accommodate me by not sending me junk mail, or pictures of strangers in the mail, nor do they call me up to try to sell me Jamberry Nails on the phone. The difference is that they actually have to give it some thought when they use snail mail or the telephone. Sometimes the internet gives us the illusion that we no longer have to actually think about what we are doing.

@dappled_leaves Apparently not everyone knows that we can limit the audience for what we post. Read back a few posts. That’s why I asked about the gear button. I had no idea that some people didn’t know that it existed or what it is for.

It sounds like Facebook isn’t for you then.

@Kardamom, I have more than one Facebook page because of my work. However, the Facebook pages I have that relate friends remind me of getting together with a group of friends for tea or a few drinks. Some I know quite well, others are acquaintances. Some I may not know at all and have come along with one of my other friends.

There are lots of conversations taking place at the same time. People are sharing what’s happening with their family or at work. Some are having a bit of a rant about the latest political issue that’s got on their nerves. Some are asking for help. Others are talking about their latest holiday. Some are discussing the banal detail of their lives. It’s a hubbub of noise and voices. You can’t listen to every conversation and neither do you want to, so you filter (or scroll as some have said) and tune out the stuff you don’t want to engage with.

I don’t see Facebook as being so intimate as letters or personal communication. Those are specifically directed to you, whereas Facebook posts are directed to whoever might want to read them in terms of ‘friends’ or ‘public’ posts.

Just as in the real world, there are the quiet voices who don’t share much and never personal stuff and then there are the people who overshare and there are the extroverts who seem to dominate the whole conversation.

It’s a unique form of communication and I don’t think you can compare it to letters or other forms of communicative media.

@Kardamom: You have likened someone’s postings on FB to junk mail. That is an inappropriate analogy. FaceBook is more like your newspaper. Do you resent that they print some stories in which you have no interest or do you just ignore those articles?
and as @dappled_leaves said, your friends probably don’t think of their posts as “junk mail”.
Your timeline is about what you want to post.
Mary’s timeline is about what she wants to post.

It’s much easier for you to scroll past than it is for her (and John and Beth and Doug) to try to adjust their blockages to you.

I think @jonsblond metaphor is pretty spot-on. Facebook seems like more of a scrapbook than a newsletter.

Your junk mail metaphor makes me sad. And I don’t even like or use Facebook! :(

What @canidmajor said, and @Earthbound_Misfit , that doesn’t bother me and sometimes it’s interesting. The things that bother me, and I just hide them, not unfriend them, are rants about politics, people that post memes and nothing but, especially the inspirational or dumb ones. People that post nothing except ads and shit about their home business, selling stuff or what ever.

Have to add this because I just got one: people that send me chain shares on messenger. Blah blah send this 14 friends….. I don’t know why but it annoys the bloody hell out of me. And I can’t be rude about it because it’s from my two best friends whom I think don’t really get fb.