Today’s post comes from Idea Man, Marketing Genius and Convener of The Meeting That Never Ends, Spin Williams.
Wow, I couldn’t believe it the other day when I read that Facebook makes its users sad! A study reveals that people are so annoyed by friends who are traveling, going to nice restaurants, surfing, skydiving, adopting a puppy, and living life with joyous ferocity that they begin to feel, well … ordinary.
‘Why can’t MY life be so fabulous?’, the Facebook Frowners ask, just before they sink into an irredeemable trough of self-loathing. And of course their lives are a disappointment because they spend far too much time watching and worrying about what OTHER people are doing on Facebook!
We brought this up at The Meeting That Never Ends because it puts hundreds of millions of people on an emotional see-saw, and there has to be a way to make some money off that.
The question:
Which came first, the Facebook or the Sad?
The answer:
Where do you get off asking such a dumb question? It doesn’t matter. Why aren’t you out dancing every night like your attractive, energetic friends Bob and Carol?
Did you know this? Only some Facebook users were bummed by the interesting activities of their friends. However, ALL Facebook users were made sad by the news that Facebook makes you sad! Why? Because now they’re lumped together with a bunch of envious losers.
AND the Facebook = Sad equation makes non-Facebook users downright giddy when they find out about it. Presumably NOT through Facebook.
But before you begin to gloat, take note – most of the non-Facebook users spent what would have been their Facebook time watching TV, which also promotes impossible comparisons with beautiful people. TV can make you feel sad AND stupid.
Here’s the kicker – not only are most of these additional statistical details remarkable, they are also totally made up and were never in the study to begin with. Does that make you feel like a chump? It should – because that’s what you are if ykou believe anything you read on the Internet!
Now don’t you feel a little down?
The difference between Facebook sadness and TV sadness is that the impossibly beautiful people on TV are folks you don’t know and can NEVER know. Of course they’re smiling – they got on TV. The people on Facebook are your friends. They’re a lot like you. So it stands to reason their happiness would make you furious.
Which brings me to this great new personal service idea – Facebook Fact Checking! What if you could hire someone to uncover the dark side behind all those smug faces you see? Wouldn’t it make you feel better to know that trip to Paris they gushed over by posting all those gauzy photos was actually a rainy, bitter nightmare that left them barely speaking to each other? They didn’t say any of that in the captions to those pictures at the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. Why would they? It took FikkiLeaks to find out!
Of course, hiring one of these Personal Information Gathering Surrogates (P.I.G.S.) might feel like arranging with a private investigator to spy on your friends. But it seems so tawdry when you put it that way. And sad.
Don’t be sad. Let’s turn the page!
Your pal,
Spin
What makes you sad? What gets you out of it?
Trail Baboon 
My daughter took her two kids for final school shopping. Lily, to be 11 on Christmas Day, did true “Tweener” shopping.
Lily somehow in this family of folks who are in and out of clinical depression, is always up, up, up. So on the ride home from shopping, Lilly gave her machine-gun joyous laugh. She does not use that laugh often but does laugh in other ways all the time. It is that machine-gun laugh (I do not know how else to describe it) that uplifts everyone.
So in the backseat, Lily machine-gun laughs and says with glowing brightness in her high soprano voice, “I am very happy.” My daughter laughs in her joy to hear the machine-gun laugh and asks why. Lily explains, “My new mood ring says I am.”
We think she will wear out the happy color on the mood ring.
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i love your vignettes
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Kid laughter is an amazing balm. I hope Lily does wear out the happy on the mood ring.
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Wow, I haven’t seen a mood ring since the seventies… Go, Lily!
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
The days becoming shorter and the end of summer always makes me sad. Although I love autumn with the orgy of color it brings, there is just nothing like the summer garden, flowers, and fresh veggies. And those long days that go on and on….Sigh.
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i think we have just the right amount of differential. alaska is too much. a little green gray in the sky at 3am isnt enough of what i consider night but really the idea of the sun doing a quick wave on the horizion at noon on christmas is too much to bear, or in indonesia where the days are all exactly 12 hours long. boring and nothing to look forward to. i think the cold and short days make you savor the warm long ones. without one the other wouldnt mean anything. san diego and honalulu may prove me wrong but im sticking to my story.
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Good morning. The world is full of things that can make me sad. There are personal things that do this as well as a lot of bad things we hear about in the news every day. The bragging that people do on Facebook doesn’t cause me to feel that way. I think that bragging is kind of ridiculous and it might make me a little angry if it is too outrageous.
I don’t have any good way to get over a very sad situation such as the death of someone close to me. I need a fairly long period of time to deal with something that makes me extremely sad. When I am only a little sad I can move on and leave the sadness behind fairly quickly. I try not to let the bad things I hear about get me down. Music can help me deal with sadness.
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Well, I’ll admit that only when I view the seemingly overactive lives of my friends & relatives on FB do I suddenly contrast theirs to mine – and come up pathetically short! When my actress daughter in law doesn’t find time in weeks to have me drive in to hang out with the little family, I check FB and actually see fresh pictures, notes, etc. of her 20 hours daily social life. And her 2600 friends. When I look at all this, I do feel smaller and less relevant sometimes. Also significant is that I rarely publish on my wall what I’m thinking or doing since there’s so little going on in my life. One other form of torture is looking at my former Kauai lover’s photos of the exotic island views, always with a much younger, attractive woman who’s just gushing over a 2-week hike or kayaking excursion with him. I guess FB does indeed trigger some sadness for me.
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what makes me sad is stupidity often my own over missed opportunities and misspent direction when options would have made a difference, i choose plan a with plan b in the back of my mind and go on but…. i try not to dwell but my artist brain often spins a story about that other road and i wonder if the choices would have made me less bound to current commitments. i try to get off the negative cancer producing thoughts and get back to the happy side as quickly and completely as possible but it is like a looking glass wondering what life on the other side might be. my recent trip to ely and the ease of life in nature remind me that choices to live in comfort make for a lot of discomfort to get there. not if only i could hear that machine gun laugh… nothing makes me smile like happiness. isnt it funny how easily that works?
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my son has a group od firends who follow one kid they went to school with who has developed an entire world for his facebook persona. he shows al the cool stuff he does and the group my son hangs with has become amazing and finding the source of the stuff he lists for his life. i dont think they ever call him on it but they marvel at the fact taht this guy keeps putting out his facebook activities as he does a cut and paste of his wish list of life. i would there is something that will come back to whack him as he goes through life in an illusion but he keeps finding new ways to live through his facebook page in an exciting and fulfilling way. wow. makes you glad that you have your own challenges to deal with and not those of everyone else out there.
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I am usually a pretty happy person. but there are certain things that really get to me, such as seeing a stray/lost dog or cat, hearing about animal abuse, and conflicts at work, My relatives all live so long that their deaths are only cause for honor and celebration. I was home a couple of weeks ago and my dad said he doubted that he would be alive the next time I came home. He was being realistic, not maudlin. He sure is happy right now, though, knowing he has lived his life to the fullest.
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its nice to be able to reflect on how well it has gone and not get hung up on the unknown (or the known and not a damn thing you can do about it). you visit your dads home every so often dont you? i had gotten the impression your dad was doing pretty well after his bout with mortality.
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He is tired all the the time and is having chest pains again, so he is popping nitro pills like he was before. His mind is active and as squirrely as it always was. He just doesn’t feel well.
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you appreciate your health when it is a memory
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This reminds me of a rather recent thought about the single best (only?) reason to celebrate turning 70 next spring. My grandmother died at 99; my grandmother at 89; my mother at 79. A clear pattern of each generation losing a decade emerges here. I’m 69 and already been faced with a certain kind of early death, so making it to 70 will bust up this legacy 🙂
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Thinking about this, the thing that makes me most sad is “man’s inhumanity to man”, and it’s why I don’t watch much news. The only thing I know to do about that is to get busy and do something, any little thing, to help the world somehow. But I don’t feel like I do nearly enough, and often feel like I spend days just spinning my wheels.
OT – we’re spending our third day in the basement. (No A/C here except a window one in an upstairs bedroom.) Have set up a little kitchenette, and a “living room” by the one big window. Reading a lot and playing Mexican Train. This computer is way upstairs, so I’ll see you tomorrow, baboons, unless we go to the library for a change of scenery. Might try kayaking this morning.
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Morning!
I’d rather not talk about things that make me sad. Music always perks me up. And kind words from genuine people like this group.
OT: My dad is going home today. He’s been in a care center for rehab and he’s doing well so today he gets to go back to their apartment in the senior complex.
Two days ago, while outside on a walk, he took his walker across the grass, through the wood chips and landscaping stones in order to pick a flower for Mom. Mom scolded him to get out of there but of course he wouldn’t listen. And while he was there he picked her a rose too.
All the while Mom complained and scolded him, she was pretty pleased about the two blossoms in the styrofoam cup.
Big family picnic planned for Sunday. It started out being the ‘Photo by the Fence’ party, but too many people won’t be able to attend so the theme has changed to ‘Things You Find Sitting on a Fence’ party.
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i like your dad.
your party themes are a wonder to behold ben.
enjoy
i like the idea of not dwelling on things that mke me sad. in reality that is the technique i tend towards in real life
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like
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Lots of things make me sad. Like Renee, I feel sad when I see a picture posted of a lost dog. I get over that sadness by going home and giving Pippin extra love. I guess I’m genetically predisposed to seriousness, pensiveness and a somewhat cynical perspective on the world.
Losing someone you love, through death or the end of a relationship, is always a devastating thing to experience. I’m not sure sadness is the right word for that. It’s something you have to work through.
In a more general way, it makes me sad that my job choice has resulted in so much less free time, especially when it comes to this blog. Some of the coworker issues I’ve had have modified slightly. I can’t say that things are better, but they have altered enough that I can function within the work environment. Time alone, meditation, music, friends, and quiet remind me that I’m just at a place in the river where the current against me is particularly strong. I can swim through it. I feel stronger and less alone.
I stay away from here because I’m tempted to break the federal law called HIPPA. The home I work in has a very, very young individual with a daunting set of challenges. I can’t legally discuss it but it really, really has had an impact on my ability to be here.
I have used facebook to reconnect with very old friends. I have reacquainted myself with two childhood girlfriends. One of them lives within a block of her childhood home in Owatonna and works in early childhood education at the very same elementary school we attended as girls. The other has moved to southern France, in Provence, and has an amazing and joyful life there. She has an online business and a small shop there. She enjoys sunshine and French wine every day! So yeah, Dale, that kinda makes me look at myself with some doubt, but I’m happier in this quiet moment and I have to go to work today.
Bless you, baboons, for being here.
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nice to see your smiling font again krista. its too bad life isnt fair. you deserve to have a problem free happy life if anyone ever did but…. its nice to see you have figured out a way to deal with the strong current. if it doesnt kill you it makes you stornger sounds good but it can be exhausting.
are you gonna be able to sit down and relax and enjoy the rock bend shindig this year or are you preparing chili for 300 and all the side dishes and running the stage that keepd you from being able to watch the main attractions. appreciated thankless tasks i am sure but not the same as enjoying the do.
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Oh, Rock Bend! Of course, it’s still FREE – FREE – FREE! and we’re going to have another great festival this year. I am excited about it and NO, I won’t be cooking for 300 volunteers and musicians this year. I did have to put my foot down – well, STOMP my foot down – and we’ve been able to make arrangements with the St. Peter Food Co-op to provide the backstage food. The menu Tom has provided looks absolutely amazing. I could never have provided so much healthy, locally grown, organic food for carnivores, vegetarians, vegans and gluten-free eaters. No musician or volunteer will want for anything. I’m so very pleased about it. I also have a new co-manager for the North Grove stage this year. My old friend, Bix, is going to step out from behind the sound table and help me manage the stage. He’s well-known in Mankato and St. Peter so I think he will emcee, which will allow me even more freedom. I never enjoyed the emcee role and will be glad to have him do it. I hope to see some of you there. Yes, I will have more time to relax and enjoy the festival – if only I can sit still! 11 days away! Who will be there?
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I’m planning on it!
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It’s on my calendar as well… probably just Saturday this year….
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Husband and I are planning on Saturday.
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me
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Oh HIPPA. It keeps so many good stories and interesting characters under lock and key! Don’t let it keep you away from us. There is more to you than what you do at your work!
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I consider myself fortunate to not have friends who brag about their lives, but then, my friends are mainly SF/F fans, who post a lot about the great book/movie/program they just read or saw, but will never be able to afford fancy vacations to Thailand or Switzerland or wherever. A few make good money and travel, but I’m kind of indifferent to whether I ever travel or not, so I’m cool with vicarious experiences. I’m also not much prone to envy; I don’t have a great deal to prove to the world. At times I’ve thought I’d like to have Neil Gaiman’s career, but if I had his creative energy and ambition I *would* have his career (and his fans, scary thought…).
As for what makes me sad…thinking about the past and the dead, of course, as well as cruelty of any kind, greed, and pointless destruction. I find distraction in friends and in fandom, either talking things out with people I trust or venting emotional energy into a consuming interest of some kind, like when I was obsessed with anime or the new Doctor Who. That sounds like avoidance, but I acknowledge my feelings, I just figure I don’t need to feel them 24/7 when I can’t escape and there’s nothing else I can do to make the situation better. I’m casting around for a fandom to help me through this yucky situation with the nasty coworker and looking for another job, and can’t quite settle on anything, but you can’t force it.
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Nasty coworkers are a real chore. Hold your head high, CG.
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Find what you can to re-energize. We spend enough of our waking hours at work that it seems to be especially draining when co-workers are awful. Hope you can find something new soon.
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i have for some reason stopped feeling bad about life coming to an end. we are all here for a while and hopefully we have time to make a dent in the planet. i love the nobel story where he read his obit and saw he was known for making dynamite and changed his bio t make the peace prize top dynamite as his main achievement.
i hope to make a dent before im done but the sense of urgency is kicking because i only have time and energy for a couple more projects. what i hope is to be i a position to get a bunch of wonderful things rolling and guide them rather than do them.
feelings about dead people tend to be motovational rather than sad these days. maybe that will change as my good friends start falling off like flies in the coming decades. i laugh when i hear someone say 60 doesnt sound old anymore. it is too old but that has certainly become relative. i hate thinking i may bite the bullet with intentions left undone but i guess i had better get ready for that reality. i have too many dmn ideas floating around to get done but at least i hope to get to a fistfull more beofre i hang it up. that makes me happy.
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i think of the dalai lama and the time i saw him talk about the secret of life.
he says it is to try to be happy.
pretty simple huh
i think i can remember that one
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I think I have shared this before – so forgive me: a few years back when I was feeling down and like I had not “done anything with my life” (or at least nothing useful), a friend pointed out that I was spending a lot of energy just then comparing myself to the accomplishments of others rather than just looking at how I had lived my life. She went on to point out that although one friend in particular may have a fancy title, she didn’t seem “happy” or “content” – and even if I wasn’t always happy, I had always seemed content, no matter where I was or what I was doing. If I could get back to “content,” then it was a win. I have kept that in mind since then – and have realized that, yes, even though I’m not always “happy,” I am very rarely not “content.”
If I do find myself in a funk for more than part of a day, stepping back and thinking on what has been good in the day or the week, or where I have found joy starts pulling me out. Laughter with friends helps. Immersing myself in favorite movies or TV shows can provide enough distraction until I can get back to the place of finding joy. Sometimes just sitting with the sun on my face is enough. And that’s the key – finding contentment with “enough.”
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It’s difficult to draw the distinction between sadness and grief. For me, sadness occurs when watching an ASPCA video or a St. Jude’s display of little ones with cancer. Sadness seems more transient and not so deep. Grieving, on the other hand, is gripping, deep, and a kind of honoring of significant losses. I agree with you, Anna, that feeling overall contented with your life doesn’t need to be the same thing as feeling “happy” most of the time. My brother once shared a theory that we all have a “set point” in terms of mood or level of contentedness. He said that most of us return over & over to this set point no matter what happens in our lives. I’m HAPPY to report that over many years of concerted effort and just enough mistakes, I’ve raised my “set point” considerably, though.
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CB – I can’t even watch the ASPCA and Humane Society ads. The remote control is my friend in this regard – I just click to another channel for a few minutes.
This week is one of veiled sadness for me. I am incredibly sad that my beautiful, mature, talented Teenager is leaving me. Move-in day is Thursday, so everything right now is about packing, organizing, arranging and getting ready to leave. And, of course, while she knows I’m a little verklempt about her going off to school, I do have to keep most of it to myself. Who wants a mother who weeps copiously for four days straight about this next big exciting part of her life?!
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eau claire is just the right distance for both of you. far enough away to make the seperation real but near enough that in an hour and a half you can be there for each other. check out the eau claire/ minneapolis shuttle service as i assume tennager will not have a veheicle. there is a van that runs to the airport for cheap so you dont always have to make the drive.
empty nest is a bitch
but think of all the options that are open to you….
and you have a great friend just a couple days and a couple miles away
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Sending a child off to college feels a lot like saying goodbye to a dear old pet. And there is no way to avoid grief. Of course, when you put down a pet it is a loss forever, whereas sending a child out into the world is a positive thing and is (in fact) just what you have dreamed would happen. But, damn, that empty nest thing hurts! When my daughter went away we both wept for many days, even if it was what we dearly wanted to happen. I’ll be thinking of you Saturday.
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There was a recent article in the Strib written by a father grieving his son’s departure for college. I think we all grieve even the first day of kindergarten, then HS graduation, then (if we’re lucky) college graduation. I guess these are all significant markers for gradually having to let go of our kids? I responded to this man’s pain by pointing out that not that many kids fully individuate until their mid-20s as they’re home for summers, breaks, and – God knows – that stretch of time post-college while they attempt to get their first “real” job! I’ve even had kids move back in while they were building a home and needed a few months of shelter. I do indeed honor your sadness, VS, and I agree that to the extent possible, keeping it to yourself is magnanimous. Someday, your daughter will be going through the very same pain – only then will she understand yours. Sending you a great big, warm hug.
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After we moved daughter into the dorm Sunday there was a formal service called “Blessing the Journey” for all new students and their parents with music and words of wisdom from the college president, campus pastors, and student orientation leaders. It was so hot that I think I sweated out all my tears. The service was comforting and fairly short, and then parents were expected to leave and go home. My goal this weekend it to clean the house from top to bottom. It looks like a bomb went off in it at the moment.
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I share your pain. We just dropped off our son at U of MN yesterday. It’s only an hour away, but I still feel a little out of sorts. The move went well and he’s in a good place with a nice roommate. I just have to stop texting and emailing him with what he should be doing, don’t forget this, remember that, etc. Let go … {sigh}
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keep doing it but he wont reply
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I know that I will be sad when my last daughter goes off to college in September, but since I will be going with her on the train to Seattle – !!! – my sadness will be preceded by excitement. I very, very rarely travel and to go to Seattle, which I’ve heard is delightful, just blows my mind.
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love the train good choice
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VS – I wanted to acknowledge that sending your ONLY child off to college has got to be particularly painful. I had the “luxury” of going through this letting-go process three time because I had three kids. Even after they’d officially left home after high school, though, I painted, decorated, supplied so many moves to so many different apartments or homes that I’ve lost count. I found that the act of helping each one of them “nest” was extremely rewarding and fun – now that I really think about it, this role probably distracted me from focusing on their leaving home.
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Thank you CB. I’m not feeling sorry for myself but it does feel different than most of the folks I know, as I am a single parent of an only child, so I go from having family in the house to just having me in the house. I do have a nice to-do list for this weekend, which includes some house maintenance, last monorail ride at the zoo and a couple of functions with folks who know and love me!
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The death of estrogen has been very disheartening.
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true that.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRffuwAnZHg&feature=endscreen
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Lots of things make me sad, but I can’t think of too many specifics right now – except when I run out of chocolate.
I think that my mom is finding that every year gets sadder as she outlives most of or all her friends. This past weekend we went to a memorial service for a wonderful person, one she has known since the 1940s and one that I knew for the first 10 years of my life. They and some other families formed an intentional community and there were many of the “kids” from that community (most of us now with gray – or no – hair). My mom looked around and commented on how many of the kids were there – but she was the only adult from that place left.
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Just finished one of our BBC books for this next meeting, Age of Innocence which I found to be a sad story. I think I’ll distract myself by going to the Fair tomorrow.
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I must have a reasonably high “set point” as defined by Steve according to Cb above. Of course I feel sad at times, don’t we all? I’m blessed to not be burdened with clinical depression as described by Clyde, but having grown up with a mother who was, I know how painful that can be. Unlike mom, who would dwell in a dark place, sometimes for months at a time, I deliberately seek the light. At times it’s difficult to find it, but I’m so aware of all the people who aren’t able to to escape the darkness, that I recoil from it. Having visited mom so many times in locked wards in mental institutions where she had undergone series of electro shock therapy, surrounded by people, heavily drugged and having lost a vital grip on reality, I know that’s someplace that I don’t ever want to be in if I can prevent it.
Mom would get depressed at the first sign of the Mountain Ash berries turning orange. For her they signaled a coming of winter that she hated. She never came to enjoy the pleasures winter can provide. To this day I’m ambivalent about Mountain Ash berries; I love them, both to look at and to make jelly out of, but they trigger a feeling of disloyalty to her.
For me, music can both induce and cure feelings of sadness, and sometimes it’s helpful in indulging in both. There are times when it’s necessary to let yourself feel sad, to cry, and just let the sadness wash over you. Inevitably, for me, there comes a time when I say: “enough!” Until now I’ve always been able to find my way out of that darkness, for that I’m grateful.
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amen
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Well said, PJ.
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