Facebook

Two days ago the problem snapped into sharp focus. I posted a comment on Facebook meant to be humorous. It was a mistake on so many levels. The idea was to focus attention on my friend group's dislike of the President. It used a snippet of a bible verse, taken out of context of course. It was the same kind of humor made when we speak of the wise men being firemen because they came from "a far". Or the Honda being the oldest auto manufacturer because the wise men came in one Accord. Immediately everyone misunderstood the post. Many didn't realize what the verse said so they simply took the "Pray for Obama" at face value. That's fine. I suppose it would be better to produce some kindly thought toward the man. Another took the following verse into context and took offense at the quip. It disappoints me. Firstly that the larger group falls easy prey to anything that hints of faith, or prayer or worship. That no offense would be taken to "holy writings" that include an imprecation meant sincerely in the past toward some other father, husband, person eludes me. That old saying tells us not to discuss religion, politics or money. But taking on 2 of the 3 in a somewhat irreverent manner was asking for it. I had, for a time, experimented with various status entries to see which ones elicited response. That was entertaining for a while. Somewhat manipulative but fun. But I realized that I was wasting a colossal amount of time and thought on it and that was a problem. The misunderstanding of the humor made me think about what level of understanding, or misunderstanding, was being passed back and forth between "friends."

So I disabled the account....

Facebook wasn't all bad. It was a great time filler. I'll miss the updates from family. Some of them were interesting. Some of the postings were enigmatic (by intent) and rarely adequately explained. Lots of "friends" were busy with all kinds of applications that were huge time wasters. I was always getting invitations to join them in their imaginary stores, wars, farms, etc.. It was fascinating to follow the moment to moment updates from various people's lives. It was hypnotic. It was almost impossible to leave alone. And I noticed that if you mentioned something you read out of Facebook to someone face to face, they always seemed a little surprised. It was as if the Facebook persona was a separate thing and mentioning things in a real world conversation was a little off-limits. Out of it I made contact with a few interesting people. The most surprising person met through it was Kathy English. She was surprised I offered her a "friend" request since, as she put it, "she treated me like shit back then." Out of the batch of friends caught by my Facebook browser, she was one of the most intelligent prospects. Someone with whom you could have real conversation. But I am thinking almost no chance of any real friendship through "that" medium.

Goodbye Facebook.