Mr. Manners here. There’s a right way to post on Facebook and a wrong way. I’m here to spell them out.

Not!

Nobody has a monopoly on the PC way to use Facebook. Everybody has an opinion. And everybody has the right to say whatever the hell he or she wants to say. Whether or not they’re heard is another matter.

But that’s beside the point. I would hate to raise my hand as the definitive arbiter of Social-Media right versus Social-Media wrong and incur the wrath of people, who like me, find nothing more f**king insufferable than the self-appointed righteous.

Do you remember what Dorothy Parker said to Emily Post?

“And how would you like a good sock in the nose, you old meat-axe?”

-Dorothy Parker on Etiquette

That said, I’d like to make a few observations, with help from luminaries like Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway, about posts I see on Facebook. In some instances, there are settings to control the behavior I describe. But I don’t care. Facebook is not my career, and I really don’t feel like Googling solutions every time the company changes its policies or the way its controls work.

1. Hijacking another author’s timeline for self-promotion: I love how authors friend each other on Facebook. Very cool. What a great community. I think it’s annoying however, when a new friend posts something on my timeline that reads: “Hi, Norb. So wonderful to meet. You know, there are 17 million reasons you and all your 4,995 friends should buy my book which is the greatest piece of literature since the bible. It begins on a dark and stormy night….” Not so cool.
2. Raymond Chandler, who never used social media, said it best: “You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.”
3. Posting pictures of kids without parental permission even if no name is used: This is a huge no-no for obvious reasons. Here’s a picture of my niece’s daughter who scored two goals in her soccer game. Yes, I asked my niece for permission to use this picture.
   
4. Tagging: I don’t know about you, but I really hate getting those emails from the Facebook mothership that say so-and-so tagged me in a photo. Usually, I click on a photo only to find a picture of an outhouse, an op-ed about gun control, or an advertisement for a dystopian thriller about Aunt Edna’s Evil Bunion. Is tagging a “workaround” for Facebook algorithms? Speaking of which, we all know that Al Gore invented the Internet. Is he also responsible for the big data formulas that trace our on-line activities, you know, Al Gore Rhythms?
5. Instant Messaging: Do you get IMs from sketchy characters that begin, “Hello”? Or “How r U?” Maybe I need a curfew. Maybe the real message here is that Facebook is the biggest time sink ever invented and I should stop skulking around my news feed after 10:00 pm. Ernest Hemingway said: “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” Maybe he was on to something.

What have I missed? Is there something about Facebook behavior you find troubling?