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Every year, I get sick of Facebook off and on; sometimes, like a lot of people, I take a hiatus. I have discovered that not being friends with many family members who don’t agree with me—on politics, the president’s nationality and religion (believe it or not), or the rights of women and pretty much anyone else who isn’t a straight white man—has really simplified things. It’s not nearly as irritating. And though I’m still friends with plenty of people who have these views, I choose not to subscribe to their updates and that, too, has made for a more pleasant Facebook experience.

But I don’t know if it’s the holiday season, or if it’s because I’m surrounded by crunchy hippie folks who talk about conspiracy theories like other people talk about the weather (I’m largely one such person myself in many ways, I’ll admit!), but it just feels like everyone is so… smug. Like we’ve become so damn self-important with our Live!Updates! and Live!Feeds! expressing every single mundane thought that we now believe we are the experts on everything.

You know, I am okay with that; I’m really okay with trusting yourself and making your own decisions rather than heading off to an “expert” to diagnose whatever’s “wrong” with you (unless it’s a serious health condition or something). But this stuff is feeling more like judgment. Feminism is propaganda! The only way to be healthy is to do what I do! The only way to be free is to do what I do! Um, isn’t this ironic, people? Don’t you see that it’s sort of an oxymoron that you are preaching?

I have found myself passing around stupid quotes and tidbits organized in neat little squares, posting them on my own wall and those of my friends’. But the quotes that once rang so true to me that I had to scramble and jot them down in my journal have gone, and this smugness has replaced them all, and I’m just sick of it.

Remember the “Smug” episode of South Park where every a**hole with an SUV was so smug about his or her purchase? I wish we could all have hybrids, too, but the smugness is killing me. Yes; be sure of yourself. But don’t push it onto everybody else in the process.

That’s exactly what these same people were angry about—what I was angry about—during the elections in the first place: the Religious Right pushing their beliefs onto our legal system. How about not doing the same thing on Facebook, supposedly enlightened ones (and yours truly)?

Of course, there’s always that unsubscribe button…

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