‘And these bad boys ain’t gonna stand for it…’

I recently started letting my Tweets automatically post to Facebook again after a hiatus.

The way it works is this: When I publish a new post on the blog, Twitter automatically grabs the headline and link and puts it up as a Tweet. Then, Facebook grabs that and posts it as an update.12825195_10206229727885807_1658495634_n

But FB does something Twitter does not do — it goes back to the original blog post and grabs a photo from the post, and publishes that with the headline and link.

Which is fine.

What is NOT fine is that if there is no image with the original post, Facebook skims through the vast store of images posted on the blog in the past, and posts that with the headline and link — without any regard whatsoever to the irrelevance of the content.

Which can lead to some pretty jarring combinations, of which I am often unaware until someone brings them to my attention.

Yesterday, Burl brought the image at right to my attention, from his phone.

I kind of enjoyed it. It has a feel like the poster for a cheesy buddy/action movie, probably a third or fourth sequel — titled, say, “Road Trip IV,” with the tagline: “That’s no roads deal. And these bad boys ain’t gonna stand for it!”

The effect would be better if it weren’t cropped so tight, so that you could see our defiantly crossed arms (below).

The photo, of course, is of Burl and me outside his museum on Ford Island in Hawaii last year.

Not all of these haphazard pairings are as amusing (to me, anyway) as this one. I’ve even on occasion been motivated to apologize for them. So I’d like to flip off the switch that causes Facebook to do this. Does such a switch exist? Does anyone know?

burl and me cropped

9 thoughts on “‘And these bad boys ain’t gonna stand for it…’”

  1. Jeff Mobley

    I’ve had Facebook put an image on my tweet that was so out of context that I just deleted the Facebook version of the post.

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      Yes, that’s all you can do! Because while FB allows you to edit text, it doesn’t let you remove the image! All you can do is leave it or delete the whole post…

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        Which is ridiculous… Removing the image ought to be easier than editing the text…

        I mean, I don’t have room to talk, I know, since I haven’t been able to figure out how to empower y’all to edit your comments here. But then, I’m not making billions of dollars from my site. If I were, I’d hire somebody to set that up for y’all..

  2. Burl Burlingame

    What if you placed a small innocuous image in each post? Even if the image is just a few pixels?

    2. Bryan Caskey

      No, I haven’t heard from him at all. I even asked him for a book recommendation on the Aubrey-Maturin series, and he never responded.

      I hope he’s okay.

      🙂

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