The Five Least Interesting but Common Posts on Social Media

John Affleck
1 min readJun 18, 2017

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Spending way too much time procrastinating on social media these days gave rise to this list. Want to make a splash? Don’t post this stuff. Think harder. Be clever-er-er.

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  1. Your food. NO ONE cares. Nobody, not even Mom (she was lying). You can be at the French Laundry or Shake Shack and this will still be true. You cannot recreate the sensation of taste with a visual.
  2. Photos of people, with or without you, about to eat their food. Possibly the most unflattering way to arrange humans for a photo is around a table in the moment just before they dig in to a meal. Those in the front get washed out. Those in the back look like disembodied heads. And everyone in the photo is thinking, “How long do I have to hold this smile? It took all day for my bacon double-cheese just to get here.” Bad all around.
  3. Anything that ends, “share / retweet if you agree.” First of all, don’t tell the reader what to do. Second, why can’t I agree and not share? Is that bad for some reason? Will it break your little heart? Also, anything that comes before that particular final phrase in a post is, typically, hopelessly earnest and ineffective as an entreaty to support whatever cause you’re supporting.
  4. GIFs. OK, once in a while GIFs will raise a smile. Once in a great while. But usually, they’re a crutch for someone who doesn’t have a good one-liner at hand.
  5. Lists. Ha!

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John Affleck

I prep sports writers for the big game, but this is more of a playground.