I promise that this song is a real song. It’s called No Te Metas a Mi Facebook and it’s by Colombian artist Esteman. It’s incredibly catchy. It doesn’t have a ton of difficult grammar, but it has a ton of interesting vocabulary words.
Check out the song here.
In general, this song is about how Esteman hates Facebook and feels that there’s too much information available to people. The first verse sets this idea up.
First Verse
Pedro Villa y Josefina están prontos a ligar
Pero Laura la vecina los ha visto desertar
Estar pronto a means to be about to do something. In this case, these two people are about to ligar, which means to flirt.
La vecina means neighbor. Desertar is a bit ambiguous. In general, it means to desert, to wimp out, or to leave. Since this line starts with pero, it implies that they ended up not flirting.
Los ha visto is the past perfect form of ver, which translates as “has seen them.”
Juan Ruja, renuncia y lo hace publicar
Leonora, su esposa pronto lo va a borrar
Renuncia also came up in in Pies Descalzos by Shakira. In that song, renunciar meant to give up since it was used with an object. Without an object, it means to quit your job.
The phrase lo hace publicar is one of the more grammatically interesting phrases. It is technically grammatically correct but is one of those examples of a song contorting phrasing to fit in the song structure. In Spanish, when you have one action that causes another, you conjugate the first one (hacer, in this case) and leave the second one (publicar) in its infinitive form. This phrase literally means “he makes it be published.” In day-to-day conversation, you’d probably hear lo publica instead of this. But then again, most people don’t write catchy songs.
Borrar means to erase. So, Lenora, who is Juan’s wife, is going to erase Juan’s post soon.
Amanda y Miranda acaban de rastrear
A Lina, su amiga que les dejó de hablar
Acabar de means to have just done something. It is always followed by an infinitive form. In this case, it’s followed by rastrear, which is a great word. It means to track or to follow the trail of something. In this case, Amanda and Miranda have gone down a Facebook rabbithole by tracking Lina.
Dejar de means to stop doing something. In this case, Lina has stopped talking to Amanda and Miranda.
Tantean, husmean, no hay nada que indagar
Es fácil, muy fácil, solo opriman pokear
Tantear can mean to feel around like you might do if you lose your glasses, or to ask around if you’re trying to figure something out. In this case, it’s probably the second one. Husmear means to sniff but in a figurative sense. If you want to talk about literally smelling something, use the word oler, which has the most confusing conjugation.
Indagar means to investigate.
The first part of this line means “They ask around, they sniff around, but there’s nothing to investigate.”
Opriman is the imperative (or command) form of the word oprimir, which means to press or click on something. In this case, they are clicking on the poke button, which might not even exist anymore. You can also use the phrase hacer clic, which is more common than oprimir.
The second part of the line means “It’s easy, very easy, just click poke”
Chorus
Esteman does not like Facebook, and he uses the chorus to make it known.
No te metas a mi Facebook
No te metas por favor
When you think of the word meter, think of inward motion. Meter can mean to put something into something else or get into something. Se metío en el coche, for example, means “he got into the car.” It can also have a more figurative meaning, such as to become involved or stick your nose into something, which is how it’s used here.
No te metas uses the negative command form of meterse, which means “don’t meddle in” or “don’t stick your nose in.” So Esteman is telling the listener not to meddle in his Facebook. It also makes for a great joke.
Cada vez que tengo un inbox
Me provoca poner close (close)
Cada vez is every time or each time. Tener un inbox is “have a notification.” You know how Facebook gives you a million notifications? So does Esteman.
Provocar is to provoke or to cause something. In this case, it modifies tener un inbox. So every time he gets a notification, it makes him press close.
Cuando escribas melodramas
No me lo hagas por el wall
This line translates as “when you write something dramatic, don’t put it on my wall.” You may not remember this, but people used to call the profile page on Facebook their “wall.” Here, we use wall instead of pared because it refers to the name.
Cuando can trigger the subjunctive when referring to non-habitual actions or something that might happen in the future, which is the case here.
Hacer can mean to post on social media, alongside publicar.
Second Verse
De 620 amigos te relacionas con diez
This line uses the word relacionar, which means to have a relationship with someone. This line is describing the common social media phenomenon where someone has a bunch of friends on Facebook, but doesn’t actually know them.
90 desconocidos más 60 friend requests
This line talks about the sheer number of people who are not known personally but send friend requests on social media. The literal translation of this is “90 strangers plus 60 friend requests.”
Desconocidos means “strangers,” and comes from the word desconocer meaning “to not know” or “to be ignorant of.” You can see the word conocer in there. In this case, más means “plus.” Similar to wall in one of the previous lines, friend requests remains in English, which is common in colloquial Spanish when referring to specific terms related to social media.
Te buscan, rebuscan, pronto te van a ver
Continuing on the theme of Facebook being a tool that is used to learn way too much information about other people, this line emphasizes how people actively try to find and view your profile online.
It translates as “they search for you, search again, soon they will see you.”
Buscar means to search or to look for something. Rebuscar is used here to add emphasis. If you look up a definition of rebuscar, it will likely also say that it means to search, but it is usually used to mean to search carefully.
Junticos, toditos, apuéstenle a la red
This line translates as “together, all of them, they bet on the network.”
Some interesting notes here. Junticos is a diminutive form of juntos, which means together. Normally, diminutives end it -ito or -ita, like toditos, but you may hear -ico and -ica in Colombia, where Esteman is from, and parts of Spain. Typically, in those places, both of these forms are used.
Apuéstenle comes from the word apostar, which means to bet. It’s followed by a to indicate what is being bet on. In this line, it’s la red or the network.
200 eventos, a los que debes ir
Aceptas a todos aunque no quieras ir
Esteman continues with the theme of the accessibility of everyone on Facebook being overwhelming. This line translates as “200 events, to which you must go. You accept all of them even if you don’t want to go.”
Debes comes from deber, which is used to talk about things you should or have to do. This line also uses aunque, which means even though. It usually triggers the subjunctive, which it does in this case.
Tu vida es difícil, tienes que decidir
Aplica la regla, ponle a todos maybe
I’m not sure that people use Facebook events as much as they did in 2010, when this song was released. But Esteman has some great advice for how to use it. This line means “your life is difficult. You have to decide. Apply the rule, put ‘maybe’ for all of them.”
When you say tener que, it means to have to do something. It’s a little more serious than deber, but you could, in theory, use them pretty interchangeably.
Aplica is the command form of aplicar, meaning to apply. Esteman is saying to apply the rule. The rule is ponle a todos maybe, or “put maybe for all of them.”
Poner means a lot of things, but in general, it means to put. It’s second person singular command form is pon.
Third Verse
No me digas que no tienes que ir al baño
In this line, Esteman is saying that there is way too much information available about people on Facebook. This is one of the common complaints that my parents had about Facebook when it first came out. Literally, this line means “don’t tell me that you have to go to the bathroom.”
Cuando te miro, te la pasas Facebookeando
I love this line because it includes the word Facebookeando.
There is a really common phenomenon in Spanish wherein English words enter the language and get turned into Spanish words. Verbs are often created this way by adding -ar to the end, which is what happened here. We ended up with Facebookear, which means to use Facebook. There’s also Googlear.
Pasar means to pass time, it can be followed by a gerund form to explain what you passed time doing. In this case, the listener is Facebookeando, or using Facebook.
This line means “every time I see you, you’re spending time on Facebook.”
Y luego, suspiro te vas a quedar un rato
Y mucho más, más
Suspiro comes from suspirar, which means to suspect something. Quedar means to stay, but can also imply that you’re going to continue doing something. Un rato is a while.
This line means “I suspect you’re going to continue [using Facebook] for a while.”
No me digas que tienes otro cumpleaños
Del que, hace un año ni te hubieras enterado
One of the other complaints that Esteman seems to have about Facebook is that people are acting like they have a rich social life when they barely know the people with whom they’re connecting. The next two lines highlight that.
This line translates as “don’t tell me you have another birthday that a year ago you wouldn’t have even known about.”
Since the rest of the line is covered in other parts of this song, let’s focus on have un año ni te hubieras enterado, because it also has some very advanced Spanish grammar.
The easy part is hace un año, which means one year ago. You can use hace + a time to mean “that time ago.”
Ni is a shortened form of ni siquiera. Adding ni here is the difference between “that you wouldn’t have known about” and “that you wouldn’t have even known about.” It’s used to add emphasis. You could add siquiera after ni, but I don’t think that’s common in lyrics because of how many syllables it has.
enterado comes from enterarse, which means to notify or to find out. This phrase also uses the subjunctive past perfect tense. It’s a very complicated verb tense and this section isn’t about to explain it very well.
It is formed by combining a preterite subjunctive form of haber, in this case hubieras, and a past participle verb*, enterado.* It means “would have.”
Será que ahora es moda festejar con los extraños
Y brindar por brindar
Let’s start with the vocabulary in this line, since there’s a good amount of complicated words here.
Es moda literally translates as “it’s fashion,” and it means “it’s the trend.” Festejar is a very useful verb, which means to party. Extraño can mean weird, but it can also mean people who you don’t really know. Brindar is to toast.
Ignoring será for a second, the rest of this line means “it’s now the trend to party with people you don’t really know and toast for the sake of toasting.”
Será uses the future tense. The future tense can be used to talk about what’s going to happen, but it can also be used to speculate or make hypotheses. Será que is similar to supongo que, which means “I suppose.”