I’ve had many complaints about the social network giant Facebook lately, I know. I don’t know if I’m just sick of it—or if what it has slowly become has made me sick. (I did get sick from the heat over the weekend, but I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with Facebook.) There are a lot of hate groups, a lot of whiny people, and a lot of negative comments on the site that I would much rather stay away from, thank you very much. There’s also a lot of stupid games (and equally stupid posts), and the activist links I used to give and receive with my small list of friends has quickly been dwarfed by a massive list of friends and family—from all periods of my life, which is cool, I must admit—and so many either boring, whiny, or downright disturbing posts that I don’t even enjoy visiting the home page anymore.

When I do manage to sift through (often “hiding” many feeds) the mass lately, I have noticed that many of my friends and family members have taken to airing out their dirty laundry on the site. Sometimes all I can do is sit and gape at what I’ve read. I’m no Jerry Springer fan, but if I were, I probably wouldn’t need to watch the show; I have Facebook.

Between people posting about their marital issues, their financial situations, their custody battles, and everything in between, I don’t think anyone remembers what the word privacy means anymore. I used to think that Facebook had privacy issues; now I see why they probably think that they don’t matter. Why should they, after all, when its members are posting about their husbands sleeping around, their need to get laid, or how much they despise their children? It’s utter madness.

Then, you have the alternate side of things—random people providing random advice to those who post their problems. Usually these are people who are not even that close, or adults posting advice on children’s and teen’s walls that has a 99.9% chance of being either ignored or ridiculed. I get that their hearts are in the right place, but they don’t like your advice when you give it to them face-to-face; why would they like it when you post it for their friends to see, too? That’s another thing—parents posting on all of their kids’ statuses seems to be a regular occurrence now, too. Though my parents are not on Facebook, I can imagine that the constant commenting—“Haha, LOL, that’s my girl, I love you, when will you call me, your mother wants you to call her!”—can get annoying.

I can’t even remember the last time I updated my own Facebook status. When I did, it was probably either about library books or a cute quote I overheard my four-year-old say. (Yeah, that probably annoys people too, but so what? It’s not that personal and she is hilarious. It’s no different from that John Steward YouTube video you posted.) I’m just so disenfranchised with the thing it turns me off. That said, I still don’t think I’ll be leaving anytime soon, since it did, after all, connect me with one of my old best friends from my childhood—whose daughter is now my own daughter’s dear friend—and several other people I’ve missed along the way.