#YaddaYaddaYadda

Those who know me know I don't do Facebook.  And they know the reasons why.  So, it's no surprise to you that I don't tweet either.  It seems the nouvelle cheap and easy way to express one's outrage or ardor.  Like bumper stickers.  And t-shirts.  Advertisements that show I CARE™ and then we can move on having established our bona fides.  Wrong and injustice take a long time, sometimes a lifetime or two, to remedy.  They require courage, sacrifice, a tolerance for failure and being shunned, perservance, and the capacity to imagine a change you may not live to see.

Voicing online indignation about the precipitating event(s) that brings a wrong to our attention -- whether the murder of a black boy, the beheading of a journalist by fanatics, the war in Gaza or the humiliation and degradation of a wife -- and slapping a pound sign in front of it demands none of that. 

What Was I Thinking?

I dropped Facebook.  Never liked it.  When I climbed on the train I told a friend that it felt like dressing in front of an open window.  Never lost that feeling.  So, I decided to get real with myself and close my account.  With the exception of a few reunions with people I hold dear and lost contact with, I've never had any actual use for it.  I Iet myself be seduced.  Reasons?  Oh, better know it in case you're interviewing!.  My face is creased.  My hair is 99.9% white.  I am one day older than Methuselah.  Who the hell was I fooling?  I got more problems getting a job than whether I'm com-fort-ab-le with The Social Media.

Or, more insidious, opening an account Because I Should.  When did I become such a herd animal?  I ignored some cold, hard facts about myself and violated my self by becoming part of a slipstream of breadth instead of depth.  I'm an introvert.  I think in paragraphs.  I barely stay in touch with friends and family who matter; where do I get the time to pay attention to anyone else?  I eschew conversation much of the time, and question the wisdom of talking back to someone in a forum that encourages sloganeering with pictures.  Where but on Facebook can you make friends with dead people and not be considered effed up in the haid?  And Farmville?  WTF!?!?!?  And how it skews social relations to those who are computer and social media literate, which leaves out a whole bunch of elders, or lovable technophobes.


So.  I wrote a few messages to others, waited a few days, and then told Facebook to PERMANENTLY and IRREVOCABLY bury me.  If all the advertisers/marketeers who benefit from harvesting my interest "organs" want to find me, they will.  Why leave the windows open?  Why would I give Zuckerberg et fils the opportunity to profit even more handsomely off my laziness.  (See, I'm not a selfish, aloof personf!! I'm in touch with Everyone  Goddamn Body in the Whole Wide World!!!!!)


I need to return to letter-writing even if it amounts to 3 per year.  Letter-writing is how I learned to write prose.  And, those letters were the first draft of working through my, ehem, issues, which like toenails continue to grow.

By taking shortcuts such as Facebook, I dis-served myself and those who matter to me.