Why are you all so dumb? Except you George, you're cool...

After several years of avoiding relatives, people I went to high school with a million years ago, that guy I met once at a random college party and my co-workers who think the proximity of our offices makes us friends, I finally caved and joined Facebook. Yes, I am now a Facebooker. And before you ask, no... we cannot be friends.

Now, I had heard the horror stories and was thus prepared for the onslaught of breakfast rundowns and detailed accounts of how that trip to the dry cleaners went, but I was not prepared for image after image of "inspirational" and "funny" messages taking over my newsfeed. Why Facebook friends? Just, why?

Here's a few of the dumbest things I saw on Facebook this week. Let this be my last warning.

Ummmmm, really?  This is how the angels are testing me? They’re seeing how many people I can get to spam Facebook? And since when do angels test us anyway? I thought they were just God’s messengers?  And why did they tell you first? I mean, Gabriel couldn't come to me and say, "Hey Em, I got a proposition for you. You know those two big problems you have? Well, I'll make them disappear if you just drop everything and tell your Facebook friends about it." Instead, you were the divine middle man?  Either this is a really pathetic hoax, or angels are kind of dicks.

Nope. It's stalking.

Statements like this are how we end up with the William Hung’s and Carmen Elecktra’s of the world. I’m not knocking determination, but by spreading the notion that if we all simply deal with our ADD we can write the next great American novel is just setting a lot of people up for failure and forcing me to wade through a monstrous amount of crap to find the good stuff.

Slapping words haphazardly into a word doc and rearranging them into a depressing story about your childhood is not being a writer. Similarly, banging out the G and A chord over and over on your guitar while you scream “Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!” at the top of your lungs does not make you a singer. Tapping your foot to the beat of a techno song while simultaneously snapping your fingers does not make you a dancer. Telling a joke that makes your mother snort a little? Yup, still not a comedian. Do I need to go on or are you getting the point?

This “everyone is a winner” attitude has pretty much irked me since birth. I’m sure my mother can attest to the fact that I never coveted participation ribbons like the other non-athletic girls in my grade school. I would stomp home, dismayed that, despite tripping over myself and faking an injury, I was still a “winner.” Even as a ten-year-old I could see how much that horribly diminished the word. As a result, I have never tried to be a winner. Think of all the things the world has missed out on because they crushed my drive to try.

Long story slightly shorter – writing is not 3% talent and 97% lack of distraction. Real writing is a combination of talent, drive, technical skill and the ability to entertain. People with 3 percent talent write things like “writing is 3% talent and 97% not getting distracted by the Internet.”

Inception is stupid. Enough said. 

Oh sweetie... Don't put your sad desperation out there for the whole world to see. It makes me feel bad. God doesn't really care about your love life. And, seriously, why just the one quotation mark? And you spelled you're wrong, you sad, sad person.

Ok, just to show you I'm not a total grouch. Here's something that made me giggle. Yes, I do that on rare occasion.

You, George Takei, made me laugh, so we can still be friends. The rest of you suck. Get on that.

Dr. Em