I Know--I Promised . . .

I think that at some point I may have promised to feature nothing more on Facebook on this blog. I had completely determined to leave the subject, completely secure in my decision not to become one of the 1.5 million users. And I still am. And yet so many have been coming out of the closet with their contempt for Facebook, that I'm feeling like my anti-establishment stance is becoming . . . establishment. What a quandary!

I know, Facebook users, that this article is something you can laugh at because it was a Facebook user who drew my attention to it. This excerpt is from The Weekly Standard , and once you read these couple of paragraphs, you'll want to read the rest of this hilarious piece by Matt Labash.

So I'm not inflexible. But there is one promise I've made to myself. And that is that no matter how long I live, no matter how much pressure is exerted, no matter how socially isolated I become, I will never, ever join Facebook, the omnipresent online social-networking site that like so many things that have menaced our country (the Unabomber, Love Story, David Gergen) came to us from Harvard but has now worked its insidious hooks into every crevice of society.

For the five or six Amish shut-ins who may not yet have heard of this scourge (your tenacious ignorance is to be admired, and I'd immediately friend you if I was into Facebook and you had electricity), Facebook is an online community where colleagues, friends, long-lost acquaintances, friends of friends or long-lost acquaintances, and perfect strangers find and "friend" each other based on their real or perceived affinity. They then have access to each other's web pages, and consequently to each other's lives, quirks, photos, jottings, oversharings, and mental disorders, as well as to those of the ever-expanding universe of their friends' circles, thus increasing the likelihood that you will either embarrass yourself or be embarrassed by someone whose life would never otherwise intersect with yours. (Right about now, a Facetard is ginning up an angry letter to the editor saying this would not be the case if you know how to control your privacy settings. Save the geek speech for your Facebook friends, Facetard, I already got my eight hours sleep.)"

You have to admit--Facebook is an easy target!