Facebook Ban - Facebook Warfare

Facebook is an amazing tool. It can be used to reconnect with people, promote events, stalk people, and so much more. It can also be used as an effective weapon in the Passive Aggressive War so many people engage in. I briefly touched on some of this behaviour here, but this post will let us delve into the tactical genius of Facebook as a social weapon.

To be clear, I am not talking about full on battle royale's via wall posts or photo comments. Having a "screaming match" via Facebook is just embarrassing. I'm talking about the intricate dance of internet passive aggressiveness. an integral post on a third party's wall, a strategic photo tag, all these things are tactics in this online war.

What are the reasons one would be warring via Facebook you ask? Break-ups, friend fights, anything to do with the opposite sex etc. etc. etc. Any reason why you would be warring in real life would be a reason for it to trickle onto Facebook. You've probably done it and not even realized. Ever notice how many times you visit the profile of a person you're fighting with? Well, that's considered "gathering intel" my friends.

Even if you tell yourself that you are not conducting any of this behaviour, you know the correspondence between you and certain groups of people will show up on their newsfeed. You know that even if you are no longer Facebook friends, tagging a friend of theirs in your photos from that "great party you didn't invite them to" will pop up in their newsfeed...

Ah, the newsfeed. This is your medium. The Facebook Newsfeed sends you information on your friends, and lets you know of the activity happening on their profile. Your crafty posts with third party profiles connected to your victim will inevitably show up on their news feed.

Here's an admittance I have of warfare I engaged in. It was about 3 years ago, and I maintain this is not my normal behaviour. I had just begun dating someone, and their ex girlfriend had gone a little mental about that. She had approached me multiple times on the fact. So instead of retaliating publicly, or dramatically, I merely posted my "favourite" song on my new boyfriend's wall. I didn't hear from her again.

I do not condone the use of Facebook as a weapon in the Passive Aggressive War. It is childish, but people do it because it provides the perfect avenue for it. In my next post I will be talking about what happens when this war is taken too far...