Facebook was ruining my self esteem

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Facebook sucks sometimes

I used to get so jealous a couple of years ago. For instance, I would notice that other people were writing on my friends walls and when someone posted a status update, they would get like 60 likes.

No one ever posts on my wall or likes my status updates so I would get jealous.


Now I don't really care that much. People who tend to use Facebook more often are people who are popular on Facebook. If you're not popular on Facebook, theres really no other reason to use it except for checking it every once in a while.

I remember as well. People who post pictures about how amazing their life is and how they were at this really cool party and I would get jealous.

You have to remember that often people "hype up their lives" on FB and make themselves sound more interesting, sociable and positive than they really are.

Nobody who I know "hypes up their lives" for FB. People simply post the fun or good stuff usually. There are people who post how their lives suck or how this or that is horrible, but most keep their emotional outbursts like that off FB. People also post when they or someone in their family is sick, or hurt, when someone loses a job or gets laid off, when something bad happens, etc. I couldn't imagine why anybody would want to "hype up their life" for something like FB, unless they are extremely insecure in the first place and thinking that FB is much more important than it actually is.

People post pictures from parties and get togethers because those are fun to look at. I'd rather look through my friends photos and see pics of them out at parties or with other friends or out doing things than them sitting in front of a computer in their night clothes or staring at the television with a sad face. Those aren't things that are interesting. Everybody does those things and because everybody does them, nobody wants or needs to see them. That's why people post pics of them doing things. Pics of them not doing things aren't interesting.

The people I know who post pics and fun status on FB (including my kids) aren't hyping up anything. They are showing actual parts of their lives, with actual friends and actual places they have actually gone. It's real. They don't show themselves laying on the couch watching tv, or sitting in the den reading a book, or in the back yard cutting the grass or in the kitchen frying an egg or making a sandwich. There are plenty of people who use their FB to post depressing or dramatic stuff, and if that's what you think people should be posting, drop me a line and I'll recommend them as friends for you, I usually hide their stuff from my newsfeed because I don't want to read depressing stuff every single day on my FB.

I'll rephrase...I was too unclear.

What I mean by "hyping up their lives" is that most people only show the good or fun parts of their lives and not the sad, frustrating or boring times: which hardly gives an accurate picture of their lives...basically what you said. Not many people I know exaggerate events.

Im not going to quote everything I read because its too much work as I am writting from my phone but id like to reply to some opinions.

1. To the person who said what do I expect my cousins to do, if they dont like my company they shouldnt have to do anything with me, etc.

I dont expect them to do s**t. Im venting out thats all, and you are wrong, they didnt always dislike me and pretend because they would have sleepovers at my house and throw surprise parties in the past for me and such. I dont think they did that all those years because they couldnt stand me as you implied. And I do have right to feel bad, I have feelings too. Being aspie doesnt mean im a robot. I did not stalk them, call them, show up at their house, write to them etc after they posted those pictures. I left them alone for good and dont intend on having anything to do with them either because I too have pride.

My sister should have met my child, she lives ten minutes away. you say having the same blood doesnt mean anything, well it does to me and my culture. Cousins not so much but siblings yes, siblings should have some kind of association with each other. if you feel happy your sister has nothing to do with you and shouldnt have to present your "ret*d" self to her friends as you put it then good for you. You feel aspergers makes you a ret*d that deserves no social interaction well thats only your opinion.
I have two kids and I am raising them as brothers not strangers. I teach them to share and play together and be there for each other. My oldest is aspie and my youngest is nt, they are equal and thats something I instill in them. Friends come and go, family is forever. While I agree cousins are not of great importance parents and siblings are.

Facebook isn't there to give an accurate picture of someone's life. It's there for people to share what they want to share with people they want to share it with. Some people do post about the sad, frustrating or boring times. I don't know how many posts I've seen about somebody missing their ex, or being mad at their bf/gf/husband/wife, or people who post "Bored, text me" or some such. I also know a lot of drama queen types who post all kinds of depressing stuff and angry stuff etc. I also know a couple of people who post a whole lot of rants about everything from politics, religion, football, gun control, and one guy even rants about the weather. Really, like somebody can do something about it. But, my point is that all that boring or angry or whiney or depressing stuff is out there on FB, but you can scroll right past it if you want. Lots of times people feel bad about posting it the next day and remove it.

The reason behind only posting interesting things is that there is absolutely no point in posting uninteresting things. Nobody wants to read "Put new batteries in the remote, showered, eating cereal now" or something along those lines. I've seen people post pictures they took of some item or something at the grocery store or Wal Mart or some other boring place like that and put a funny comment about it. I see a lot of those. Lots of people take pictures of themselves and post them.

I just get frustrated when I see people say that others just use FB to brag or show off that they are doing something that the jealous person isn't. Not that the OP was saying this at all, or the poster above. I've seen people say that a lot and I think it's just misinterpreting what people mean. I've seen people say that nobody could possibly have such a fabulous life as they say on FB, when I haven't seen anyone on FB who seems to have such an unbelievably fabulous life. It's just them doing what they would ordinarily do and putting up pictures or info about it online for others to see if they want to.

One thing that I do think about FB and sites like that in general is that it really encourages people to take a whole lot more pictures now than they would have before these things existed. Especially since you don't have to wait and get them developed and pay for that, then either show them to someone face to face if they are interested or put them in a book that somebody is only going to look at when they come to your house. With FB and stuff like that it's out there instantly and nobody has to see it if they aren't interested. You can just scroll right past it and not click on their albums. I look through peoples photos all the time because I like to do that, and I know that they wouldn't have taken all these pics if they had to use a regular camera and film and all that. Taking all these pics and posting them is just a new trend because of the ease of it. I have a friend who uses her phone to take short little videos of all sorts of unimportant things and posts them, like how her dog hates Wal Mart plastic bags and barks at them when he sees them. If there was no FB to put that on I seriously doubt she would have filmed that and put it on a videotape or something. I think it's all just a trend now because it's so easy.

I imagine that the popularity of doing that will last until they come out with something new to replace pics and videos online. I wonder whats next, a hologram or something?

I've shared happy and bad news on my facebook. One of my teachers unfriended me and I am not sure if it's because I had an application that was flooding my whole facebook page with it and she got tired of seeing it on her wall or she thought I was complaining about my life and about my life as a parent and she got sick of it. Or it was just a glitch in the system that took me off her friends because sometimes FB does that.


You can't win. Post something bad, people think you are looking for sympathy and seeking attention. Post something good on it, people see it as you bragging and trying to make your life look good.

But to hell what people think. They can interpret what I post however they want. I think knowing me in real life would reduce misunderstandings online but I guess not.

I think you misunderstood me. As I wrote, my sister and I do have normal contact now again, and I dont feel myself ret*d. I only understand, that around her teenager time SHE had problems presenting what she thought to be her ret*d sister in her oppinion. Around that ages its everything about social status. All that nonsense they do around that age has the only goal to acchieve the highest possible social status, so even the smalles nonsense becomes sooooooooooo important for them. As I said, she did not only care about my life around that age. She also didnt care for her own life as well, so I dont think I can blame her for not taking care of my life. ^^ Fitting hair style being more important then fitting motor cycle helm. If I wanted to be rude I could simply say, that her normal brain activities were not doing well around that age, and the only brain parts that was active, were those that were linke with "acchieving the highest possible social status". Or simply: She had puberty. The thing is, that this is in my oppninion nothing that I can blame her, because she couldnt choose to get puberty. Like nearly every grown up person, she herself cant believe many of that nonsens she did around that age. I dont blame her for her doing around this age, because she had no fault in it. And as every teenagers, she was the one that suffered most because of her puberty, so if she would have had a choice to think clearly around that time, she would have stopped it because of having benefits to do so. But she couldnt. Her brain was programmed to "acchieve highest possible social status", ignoring all consequences of her doing against others, but against herself as well.

I simply dont see a benefit in being mad at her for the rest of my life, because of her getting "normally mad" for some years around her puberty. So there were some years, that she acted in a bad way, but its done now and we appreciate each other again. So I can choose between wanting to be mad at her for the rest of my life, causing problems, because of some years that she had a not so nice behaviour, or having a good time with her again now shes normal again. So from my oppinion the last option has more advantages.



In this you are also blindly telling what society tells you to tell. We dont have nothing to do with each other. In the opposite: She is the only one of my relatives, that accepts me the way I am, and that allows me to have the sort of contact to her that I like, that allows me to be happy about having contact with her. So which relatives of mine do you think, are the ones, that I do have more associations? The ones, that force me to have contact with them "because family has to have contact", rudely ignoring that their way of contact is exhausting me, was responsible for my breakdown and burn out, that get angry and shout at me when I tell them, that I dont want to see them this weekend because I am already completely done and exhausted and need a rest, telling me that I am a social a**hole to feel this way, because meeting with family is something relaxing so the more exhausted I was the more I should want to have family meetings? Or my sister simply writing with me (The onyl one of my relatives, that is not ignoring that telephone is really exhausting for me.): "Oh, I feel sorry about you, about being so tired again. Hope you get some rest, and that you can do some of the stuff you like in the evening, so the day is not completely lost to you. Next time I come home I plan to meet some friends at ... . Maybe will meet there, if you feel fine that day. Here is a link of the new simons cat video, if you dont know it already, hope its making you laugh."

Having an association with someone, does not mean to act as societys rules tells you to act if you want to show an association to someone. Its about asking the person about what deeds the person itself has. According to society rules, most of my relatives must have great associations with me, while they are in reality simply ignoring my deeds and terrorizing me. While my sister gives into me and allows me to have the sort of contact to her, that allows me to feel comfortable. She is the one of my relatives I have an association with, because of her respecting MY deeds and MY wishes, instead of my other relatives respecting the deeds and wishes I SHOULD have according to society if I was normal.

If you want to be mad on your cousins and sister, because of actually not having the deeds and wishes to have contact to you within themselfs, its absolutely ok. Its your life and your family, so you have to decide how you want to act in this situation. But their deeds and their feelings want change because of you being mad at them and maybe trying to force them to have contact to you because according to social rules they have to have the wish and the deed to have contact to you. I dont think it will be easy to get them into accepting you, when you in the opposite also dont accept their feelings.

You didnt answer my question. So they feel how they feel. If you dont want to have contact with someone, you cant convince yourself because of logical reasons, to feel otherwise. So what do you expect them to do? To phone you and act as if they would fine about it, when they in reality only wish to end the phone call as fast as possible? To meet with you and spend the whole evening, while they are in reality typing SMS with their friends about how bored they are the whole evening, and that they hope the evening will end as fast as possible? Shall they build a broadway musical around you, with everyone as an actor lying to you all the time? I fully understand that you are sad, I also was sad, when my sister started with her puberty issues, it also hurted me, when she was pushing me away around that age. But what solution do you actually see, that fits your deeds? I mean it sometimes happened that my parents forced her to spend time with me around that age, but more than that is not possbile. So she spended time with me, because of my parents forcing her to do so, because she had to do so, because she is my sister. She wasnt happy, I wasnt happy because of her not being happy spending time with me. So absolutely no suitable solution.

What is it, that you expect them to do? Which possible solution, would make you feel more comfortable again? I think you also misunderstood my intention. Its not about accepting, that you are ret*d and that its normal that people dont want to spend time with you. It was more about accepting, that other poeple can be ret*d on their own from time to time. This is sad, but only because someone other starts to act weird, you shouldnt lower your own self esteem in your own eyes. You are the person you are, no matter how many people want to have contact with you or not. And you dont loose or gain any "worth" because of people having more or less contact with you. I did not want you to accept of feeling worthless. I wanted to tell you in the opposite not to depend your worth on other peoples behaviour, because everyone acts weird from time to time.

Absurd!

Family is only family if everyone puts forth an effort to BE a family. Just like friends or anyone else. There no magic that makes a family bond automatically appear and love to exist. Family doesn't exist just because a man and woman combine egg and sperm.

I was abused in so many ways by my "family". I am estranged from all of my relatives except for my father. It wasn't until I had the courage to remove all the bad people from my life that I could actually feel a sense of peace. I felt more family outside of my biological one than in it.

Should you be bound to someone forever, even if they treat you terribly, just because you share some DNA?

Life is not a Disney movie.

Should they build a broadway show around me? Yeah sure, thats exactly what I meant.......no, actually that was hilarious. Overly exaggerated. I dont care anymore about my cousins, I was upset I guess because of my initial shock but im well over it by now. You tried to hurt my feelings by saying they shouldnt pretend if they are so bored. No boo, it didnt work. Im the one whos not going to pretend to give a s**t about them now. They are nothing and I dont need them.

My sister whom I protected for many years and helped in so many more ways than I will write about is a grown adult , an ungrateful lying adult. Yes I resent her, that is my choice , she shouldnt be such a b***h and my children who are both younger than 5 have never done anything to embarrass or hurt her or put her "popularity" in danger. They are beautiful and loving, she doesnt need to be in my space continuously but to chose not to meet your nephews or have anything to do with them is inexcusable and no matter how much you write and defend her choice to dislike a baby she has never even met I will not agree. your argument to me is invalid.
Family is not "absurd" btw, I guess I dont expect everyone to value their nuclear family because you perhaps dont have one or had b experiences. The love my children have for each other is not absurd, the love my husband has for us is not absurd and how much I love my children is not absurd. This has nothing to do with what society tells us to feel, f*k society. This is about what I experience on a daily basis. Its beautiful

For me, Facebook is great. I autism is effectively filtered out in Facebook interactions. I'm not really close to my family, so most of my Facebook friends are either personal friends or colleagues from work. I understand how someone who feels they don't have a life can become jealous and depressed when they see others activities. However, we all have Wrong Planet to fill the void.

I dont know you. Why should I be interested in hurting you. What advantage would I have from that one. You definitely are hurt, but not because I wanted to hurt you, but because simply I didnt tell you, what you wanted to hear. Why do you think should I be happy, because of someone else being hurt? I really feel sad for you, because of you being hurt, still I am not responsible for it. Personally I live my life, like I do my technical job. Analyzing facts, and acting to it. It is not interesting to me to know why a wall that should be guarding against fire has holes in it. Its only important for me, to close them. With people its the same: If someone dont enjoy time with me, it is as it is and I accept it and see how I want to act in this situation I accepted. This is just a personal oppinion I wrote. Simply as you do in other threads and as everybody here does. This forum is about helping each other by telling ourselfs our different oppinions to show us options we maybe didnt see ourselfes, not about winning and loosing by hurting other people on purpose.

When facing reality, I also do so about myself. While you writint that you dont care about them anymore, you write in the next sentence, that you dont care for them anymore and dont give a s**t about them. Seems to me as if you now were trying to lie to yourself. Because there are many people in the world I cant care about, because I dont even know them, but normally people I really do not care about, I dont discribe them as people I give a f**k about or b*****s. So calling someone a b***h seems not to me, as if you wouldnt care for that person.

So I dont know why you are always so suspicious that people that dont even know you, would be enjoying to hurt you and everyone who doesnt want to spend time with you, wants to tell you, you would be not worth anything to hurt you and so on. Because of this I want to explain, that I didnt write the sentences before to tell you "Haha...you tell you dont care about them, but in truth you still are..." but because I dont want you to be sad. So you are hurt about your relatives, and being hurt is not nice. So how can you be helped? From my opinion by telling you, that you will not be able to overcome yourself being hurt, by lying to yourself that you arent. You only can work on something that hurts you, so that it gets better and you have a better life again, by accepting the things that hurts you, so you can work on them to make them vanish. But I personally dont think, that ignoring your anger will help you work on it. So every person is of another kind, so if you really think that someday you REALLY wont be angry any more, by ignoring it, I trust you. But to do so, you also would have to accept, that you are trying to ignore your own anger instead of telling you, there was none.



It is not about defending. But as a technician, when I have a problem, I ask myself. What CAN I do. Not "How can I solve this problem in a perfect world, to get a perfect solutions.". I would love to. But I simply only can think about the best possible solution. And the best possible solution can be defenitely horrible, still its the best thing I can do, if there are no other solutions. So the problem is your sister not wanting to spend time with you. I cant offer you solutions, that forces her to do so or that gives you the power to force her to do so. Not as long as you dont want to go to jail. So non of us forum posters can offer you a solution that would force your sister by violence to have contact with you. We also cannot change her mind so that she wants to spend time with you. There is nothing about the situation we can do. Your sister is a free person, and as long as she is acting in the borders of your countries laws, she cant be forced, even if it definitely sucks. So we cant change the situation that is hurting you. So the only thing left that we can work on to lower your feelings of sadness is you yourself. So we can tell you to store your anger for her doing into all eternity, to hate her as much as you can, to try to damage her in every social family situation that is possible to have revenge. But angry, revengeseeking people are not happy. So if we told you to do so, instead of an sad person, you would become a sad, angry person. This would be a lousy help in my oppinion we could offer you. Being sad, being angry and seeking revenge, doesnt acchieve to make a person happier, and thats what I am trying.

To explain why I gave you my personal advice to accept it, is not because I was hoping to hurt you so I can jump around in my office yelling "Yeah... I have hurted labomba whom I dont even know and never met." but because, it is what helped me best being happy again. So I also was sad about people I wanted to spend time with, that rejected me. I was sad when I lost my emotional contact to all of my classmates around the age of 12 when they all started to puberty. I was sad when I felt, that my sister felt ashamed for me. And I always had been sad about my father rejecting me, since the first autism issues showed up. I am sad about people working in supermarket, that change their behaviour against me, as soon as I am talking some sentences to them, and they realize that there is something weird with me. This sadness was also part about me having depression.

So from the opinion that we would want to tell you, what advice should we give you. The advice to be angry and sad until all eternity, so it ruins your life? Your sister wont suffer from you being angry, wihtout her not knowing. You will be the one suffering from it, so I personally think its a bad advice, so I dont want to give it to you.

Or the advice that I have been given, accept things I cant change as they are, and simply think about what best possible solutions I can choose. Maybe I used the wrong word in your language, so maybe "Making peace with yourself." better shows what I mean instead of "Accept it." Its not about easing others. Its about comforting yourself. Because you are sad, so you should see how to comfort you the best, with the goal to make you happy again. I want to repeat, its not about accepting because noone her wants to help you. Its about accepting, because noone here that wants to help you, can make your sister or cousins into wanting to spend time with you. We simply dont have that option. And you can be angry on us as much as you want, that will give noone of us the power to acchieve that option. Just as you can get as angry and sad as you want, but we cant give you the moon.


I am happy for you, that you experience this beautiful family. I dont see why this should be absurd. So noone here wrote that there cant be no sympathy in a family. Its a good thing if there is and something to be happy about. But its simply something you should be happy about it and enjoy, when you experience it, but nothing that can be forced upon others. So its not about "Family members are not allowed to love each other.", its simple about "Family members are not forced to love each other." Its a good thing when first happens. But if the last mentioned happened you cant change it by violance.

From my oppinion, best thing for you, to achhieve to make you happier, would be to make peace with yourself about that, and then think about something nice you want to do with your family, somethings that makes you laugh and happy again. Because instead of changing the feelings of another person towards you, this is a possible solution, and the best possible solution in my eyes.

And please beware that this is only my personal opinion, and my personal best advice I can give you. But you know yourself better then I am. So if you think the advice doesnt fit, its ok, because not knowing everything about everyone in the world simply is ok and nothing I blame myself about. And I also dont like to blamed because of that.

I never wanted a FB profile, but my group members for a college class are pushing me to get one.

I can definitely relate to this. I had been feeling those feelings you felt about Facebook a few weeks ago. I honestly think that you're better off just deleting it or getting rid of the people who hurt your feelings. There is no use to keep people who just shove their "glamorous" life down everyone else's throat. They're honestly probably not as happy as they appear to be on Facebook. About a week or so ago, I met with three other girls who I didn't really know and we stayed at a cabin. I was miserable, but that is besides the point. All that they did, THE ENTIRE TIME, was post pictures and status updates on Facebook about us being out. If people do absolutely anything, they want to make sure everyone else sees that they're "living it up." That whole "living it up" bullcrap really isn't worth the social anxiety that comes along with it. I don't think I'd ever go anywhere with those girls again. They absolutely loved us hanging out, and thought it was a blast to party the whole night, but I had no interest in it. I gave it a chance, and it wasn't worth it. I went with them mainly because I thought that I would be able to experience the kind of "fun" that all these other NT's have. It's not the kind of thing I consider fun. If you put yourself out there and had this kind of "fun" would you actually be happy? Would it actually make a difference in the way you feel? It didn't for me; I felt even MORE like an outcast than I had before. Find the right people to be around that are good to you, and appreciate those people. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of them around.

I was just looking through my FB news feed at the pics that folks put up. While most of them are pics of them out with friends, it doesn't seem to me that they are doing anything at all that's so freaking exciting and "living it up" or doing something that is difficult to actually do. One girl is sitting in a restaurant with three co-workers at their monthly "girls night out". Another is sitting at an outside restaurant with her boyfriend and another couple, eating burgers. Someone else took a picture of her and a friend who was visiting, sitting on the couch together. There was a picture of a guy's new keyboard and speaker thing, several pictures of a girl and her baby nephew, this one guys new dogs, two teenage boys dressed for coon hunting standing by a truck, a girl who is getting married took pictures of possible wedding decorations she was out looking at with her mother, and somebody posted a picture of a badly made grilled cheese sandwich.

None of those pictures give me the impression that my friends are living it up in the South of France, or partying on a yacht with a Saudi Prince, or staying for a weekend at the country house of Russell Brand. There is absolutely nothing in those pictures that is in any way unusual. Nothing in those pictures would make anyone jealous. What kinds of stuff are your friends posting pictures of that makes you think they are living it up?