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How to Explain to Your Parents that They Don’t Need to Comment on Every Facebook Post They See

The way our parents engage on Facebook with the same excitement and wonder as we did in the mid-2000s is adorable. Though it’s now largely a wasteland of Minions memes and boomer humor cartoons, the olds still feel compelled to comment their inner monologues on every post they see. I mean it’s really bogging down the algorithm. Here are some helpful tips to reign in your parents’ commenting sprees.

Informing Them that Not All News is Good News

Even if you’re barely on Facebook nowadays, it’s still prudent for some people to post life news there especially if it’s something significantly tragic. Let your parents know clicking the care emoji is a simple enough gesture, and commenting with a list of all the animals that have died in their care is not an effective way to express sympathy,

This Isn’t Grandma’s Photo Album

We do miss leafing through physical photo albums, but then again we weren’t screaming “BEAUTIFUL FAMILY” or “BARBARA CALL ME” every time we turned a page. Ask them if they really, truly need to say anything about pictures of food or your second cousin’s ex-wife’s son’s piano recital.

Leaving Restaurant Reviews to the Professionals

If your folks take issue with the color of their servers hair/nails, advise them to keep that shit to themselves instead of dropping a missive on a restaurant’s page about professional attire unless they want their food spat in 100% of the time.

Murphy’s Law: Porn Edition

Make them repeat after you: Facebook is not Google. Get that in writing and notarized if you have to, as no one needs to know your dad’s porn search habits. Why after all these years they can’t differentiate a social media site and a search engine is shocking considering the latter predates Facebook by twenty fucking years.

Grammar Police, Arrest this Man

One would assume, after enduring so many rants about being taught how to write cursive, that our parents would grasp the concept of basic grammar. Maybe the effects of all that lead consumption have finally caught up to them, because a frightening majority of anyone over 50 can now only communicate via multiple ellipses and exclamation points. Inform your mom that if she needs to vent her frustration about our country’s immigration policies to a knitting group, maybe do so in a way that doesn’t make her look like she was raised by feral hill people. We’re pretty sure they make Hooked on Phonics for adults.