My college friends and I play a game called, “Facebook Friday.” They (I’m not on Facebook) pull together a who’s who of lame status updates, and we, collectively, make fun of them.

“Glass houses, Dave. Glass houses, Dave.”

And you’re right. That’s very perceptive. I’m not completely innocent here. I’m not immune or above the lame status update. Back in college, when AOL Instant Messenger was king, I would rotate a series of song lyrics which matched my current mode to a tee.

“Don’t let the world bring u down…not everyone here is that fucked up and cold.”

I’m having a bad day.

“Jane says…’have u seen my wig around? I feel naked without it…’”

No one knows the real me. 

But eventually, like wearing wind pants or buying Weird Al CD’s, I grew out of it. I matured. Now, I do what most people do. I bottle up my emotions and randomly snap on sportscasters after they pronounce a player’s name wrong.

I digress. The updates that my friends and I truly bask in are the ‘sympathy baiters.’ My friend coined the term, but he’s not that clever, so I’m he sure he lifted it from some website. Regardless. This label is set aside for the only the most egregious of offenders.

Just happy I woke up this morning…

Wish I didn’t wake up this morning…

I hope at least someone is having a good morning…

Someday, something will go right…

My head is killing me, but it’s my heart that REALLY aches.

Can we all see the pain leaping off the page? The yearning, the longing for attention. These baiters need it. They crave it. They just need one response – one sympathetic ear for their cause.

“Keep your head up, Mike. Things will get better.”

Hopefully, Alice…but right now? I don’t know…

Boom. Poor Alice has just been successfully baited.

The first documented form of sympathy baiting came in 1990, when Iraq successfully reeled in Sgt. Slaughter. And sadly, as Facebook has taught us, history continues to repeat the same mistakes. Is it our motherly instincts forcing us to respond? We booed when Slaughter aligned himself with General Adnan, yet now, twenty years later, we’re falling for Mike’s same bag of pathetic tricks. These baiters are attention starved, and, actually, speaking of starved:

Haven’t eaten since Emily left…

And it’s not that I’m heartless. It’s really not. It’s just that I don’t care. Sympathy baiters don’t care about your problems either. The other day, I walked twenty-five minutes to work in the pouring rain. My pants were soaked. And my socks – don’t even fucking get me started on my socks. Do you think Mike cares? Do you think he would lend a consoling shoulder to cry on? No, of course not. And do you know why? Because Mike hasn’t eaten since Emily left. He’s got his own shit to deal with.