So I’ve lately begun to feel that I’d like people in, say, Shanghai to learn about the wonders of my music, and since I’m not about to go on tour, there’s this thing called the Intertubes that I might try. And this is a bit annoying to me already, because I spend too much time in front of a computer as it is, and Alt-Cntl-F6 isn’t a key on any instrument that I know of. Nevertheless, I’ve been rooting around for ideas, and my dear friend Deb Cowan made a couple of recommendations for the digital swamp, and one of them was Facebook.
Now, my loathing of social networking software is legendary, at least within earshot in my household (ask my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, or, in this case, She Who Must Put Up With My Tirades). You may have encountered my counterproductive entry on MySpace, for instance. And when it comes to things like Twitter and Facebook, I’m pretty firmly in the “you kids get off my lawn” category. I can’t imagine what might possess me to post things like “Hey! This new mop is the best!”, or update my status to something like “Sam is in Pago Pago for the indefinite future, so you may safely rob his house”. True, it infuriates me that my wife seems to know more about my friend’s activities than I do, but somehow that only stiffens my resolve. Nevertheless, one must sacrifice for one’s art, so I set about setting up a Facebook fan page for yours truly.
On the one hand, there’s no shortage of eye candy on Facebook. It’s far prettier than MySpace – but then again, my local DPW yard is prettier than MySpace. But it’s hard to appreciate that when it turns out that there seem to be no useful instructions for setting up your page, a shortcoming which the Facebook folks seem to believe should be completely offset by the clean, tidy look of the interface. Bad user design is one of my personal hatreds, so it took me a while to grit my teeth and get to work, but eventually I came up with something I could tolerate.
The setup, however, isn’t the most annoying thing about Facebook; the most annoying thing is that Facebook seems to be a cult. Lots of people have commented on my page congratulating me on finally “making the leap”, as if I’ve found religion or something. And for some of them, it’s not enough for me to have a Facebook fan page; they want me to have an actual account, so I can find out about their opinions about their new mop, and find out when they’re in Pago Pago, as well as the other way around. We can be “friends”, apparently.
Now, here’s the funny thing: most of these people are already my friends. But they want to be “friends”, too. Somehow, this whole mop/Pago Pago thing has got them excited – they’ll feel like more a part of my life, etc., etc. But this is not a virtue for me. If I already know that Jane’s excited about her new mop, that’s one less thing for me and Jane to talk about when I talk to her next – in, like, the real world, y’know? I anticipate phone conversations like this: “So I was at the Grand Canyon…oh, right, you read my blog about that…well, Junior just turned two, and…yes, yes, the photos are on Flickr…and, oh, hell, goodbye.” Let’s face it, folks: there’s weddings, funerals, births, Bar Mitzvahs, graduations, and everything else is pretty much chatter. And I like my chatter in person.
So if you sign up for my Facebook fan page, you’ll probably find that I’ll probably mention when I’m going to be at open mikes, and talk a bit about shows I’ve seen, and such. But I’ll save the mop reviews for the next time you actually talk to me.