If you spend any time on the InterWebz these days, you know about the whole hoopla over the Facebook privacy thing.  (And if you have, but don’t know what do do about it, make sure to use this little tool that Lifehacker pointed me to today.  I had missed quite a bit, as it turns out.)  The issue I’m having right now regarding Facebook and privacy isn’t about keeping MY information private — it’s about ME having privacy from other people’s stuff.

I have low tolerance for people who have a constant need to make sure that everyone else knows all about their problems.  They’re never happy, or at least, they never appear to be — something’s always wrong.  These are the people who, back in the day when we actually talked to each other face to face instead of on a big electronic “wall,” used to answer the question “How are you doing?” far too literally.

My grandmother was one of these.  In the 23 years I knew her, she never once answered “How are you?” with “fine” or “good.”  The only time I really understood her response was when I called her after her husband of 50-odd years died.  (Interestingly, it was also one of the few times she didn’t say she was “terrible,” either.)

I know too many people who seem to think Facebook is a substitute for therapy.  I friended a photographer whose work I like, and his partner immediately friended me back.  I thought that was weird, but … OK.  It became the darndest thing — I can not imagine what keeps those two together.  A is always upbeat and happy.  I never saw B post a single positive thing.  He hates his job, hates living where he lives … I’ve even seen A post that he’s looking forward to something and seen B post a “Jeez, I have to go to this.  Kill me now,” in response.  Eventually I grew sick of it and defriended him recently whilst culling my friends list, so he may have had a personality change … oh, who’m I kidding?

A former coworker is another case in point.  I’ve tried my darndest to get her out of my IM buddy list, but she keeps popping back up.  Her IM status is always fun, too.  With just a single line of text, she conjures up rain clouds and storms.  She’s always too busy, overworked, under appreciated, and/or sick and/or injured. When we worked together, she would IM me the moment she got into the office, and her opening salvo was always a complaint about traffic, her boss (who, to be fair, was no friend of mine either), or her ex husband.

A couple of times, hoping to get the point across, I would let her rant, and then respond, “Good morning,” or “Fine, thanks for asking.  How are you?”  She never got the hint.  In fact, I still run into her on occasion on campus, and if I am forced to interact, I do — but it’s always a one sided conversation during which no information is solicited from me.

For a long time, she sent upwards of 10 joke e-mail chain letters each morning to a large list of people. Each one was predicated with a personal note from her, and they’ve gotten increasingly more bizarre — messages about wives being woken by snoring husbands are predicated with, “My husband doesn’t have to worry about that because of my sleep apnea,” messages about people being drunk are accompanied by a laundry list of medication she’s taking that counteract with alcohol so she can’t drink … you get the picture.  At first, I deleted the messages as they came in.  Then I decided to ask her to take her off her distribution list.

Now, let me take an aside here.  Have you ever done that?  Some people have no problem sending messages saying, “Please don’t send me any more stuff like this.” To me, it would seem that if you’re going to forward numerous messages on to other people multiple times daily, and you make a habit of this, the onus is on you to respect their wishes if they ask you to stop.

I am, apparently, alone in this.

However, I don’t have the best of luck doing it.  I tried it once with a former high school classmate–partly because a goodly number of the forwards were religious based, and made me uncomfortable if not outright angry–and wound up getting into a spat session. The ex-coworker named above informed me that it was easier for me to delete her messages than it was for her to remove me from her list (the lack of logic and reasoning is both bewildering yet typical), so, in response, I set up a filter for all messages arriving from any of her several e-mail addresses to be automatically deleted on receipt.  Oh, and I may have reported the use of her University account to send spam to IT services.  Whoops.

Equally annoying to me are spiders, spammers, and people who mean well who sign me up for listservs I don’t want to be on.  I somehow got on the “Austin Young Muslims” listserve for reasons I don’t understand as the list is for Austin-area Muslims between 21 and 30, and I am neither Muslim nor younger than 30 (to my chagrin on the last point).  I’ve been added to  mailing lists tracking CyberJihad (delete!)  After 9/11, I got subscribed to so many “concerned Americans” mailing list that when I’m drunk enough, I can still recite the hysterical propaganda I was sent–stuff so bad that it makes Orly Taitz, Birther Queen, look like a rational human being.

I am still on a mailing list for business managers with an interest in Tunisia.  I am not a business manager, and I have no interest in Tunisia.  Messages sent over the list are in French.  I can’t get off of it.  I’ve filled out the unsubscription form so many times that my browser now auto-fills my information when I load it up.  I’ve e-mailed them in English and Arabic (because, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t speak French) and asked to be removed.  And at least three times per week, I get messages that–if the words in French mean what their Spanish cognates do–inform me that the Tunisian bond market is up 300 dinar from last week.  I don’t know if that’s good or bad, and I don’t care.  I just want off the damned list!!!

I’m reminded here of the moral of the story from the end of that lovely piece of 1980s paranoia-cinema called War Games: the only way to win the game is not to play. I keep thinking of all of those ads touting safe sex and responsible drinking.  We need an ad campaign for responsible self-expression on Web 2.0.

“If you think it … breathe … reflect … and then Tweet it.”