You know what needs to stop being a thing in 2013? Complaining about how people use the internet. “Ugh, your friend is really sweet, but she SUCKS on Facebook.” “Why does this person think Instagram is Tumlbr?” “I liked her, but then she asked if I had Pinterest…”

The internet has basically become one giant yearbook, but you get to decide what’s in it without having to go to that four day summer camp at the end of the subway line where they teach you Photoshop or whatever the fuck. All your fun, all your wholesome activities, all your partying, on display (with drinks craftily cropped for principals/employers). And like high school, people parse the proverbial pages looking for things to criticize. And, again, like high school, we’d probably all be a lot happier if we just gave each other a break.

Let’s try this together: Just let people who suck at the internet suck at the internet. I’m as guilty of the real-life sub-tweet as anyone. I spend literally eight hours a day online (SHUT UP IT’S MY JOB), and of course I have my peeves. But I also know that for each one of them, I have a ubiquitous internet habit that drives someone else crazy. (For now. Soon we’ll all be communicating tweets strictly through emoji.)

Instead of complaining every time someone posts a picture of a cat in a bed of flowers eating a gourmet taco from a food truck on Instagram, or shares their Pinterest “Dream Wedding” board on Facebook and tags their significant other with a winky-face emoticon, or links to one of those insufferable build-your-own-picture-with-text thingies, I’m putting in a request that we all just chill out. If you want people to get better at the internet, YOU get better at the internet, and then slowly but surely we’ll all get better at the internet. Together. + 1 at at a time. (Just kidding. Google Plus? As if.) 

~ Haley Cullingham is SDTC’s Managing Editor. Her Instagram is full of food pictures. You’d probably hate it.