I don’t know how it happened. Well, okay, I do. A confluence of influences. Influence conflued.
Apart from the general grumpy old mannish acceptance that it really isn’t going to go away no matter how hard I ignore it …
- A friend (real-world meaning) whose blog I enjoyed reading, but which hasn’t been updated for months, admitted he’s pretty well given it up and now just uses Facebook. So if even intelligent people regard Facebook above all others, and there’s a whole generation out there who wouldn’t think of looking for me anywhere else, and I am (as ever) poised on the brink of worldwide fame … that’s where to be.
- And then another friend (also real-world meaning) tells me he’s said something online that, from the nature of our real-world meaning friendship, I know I’ll find interesting, but it’s on Facebook …
… and that was what did it. I just sort of slipped in. Being a Gmail user, I clicked on his message and found myself being invited to join up through my Google account. So I did. And then it kindly read my contacts list and showed me all the ones who are also on Facebook. Maybe I would like to invite them to be friends? (Well, maybe they already are, so nyah. And in some cases, maybe I would pay money not to be friends with them but I still need them in the contacts list. This is grown-up life, children: the ying and yang, push and shove, give and take, awareness that we live in a world where all is not sweetness and light and it sometimes just pays to smile and be polite – deep, adult concepts a world away from the pimple-ridden adolescents who designed Facebook in the first place. [No offence intended to any pimple-ridden adolescents reading this, who will be real-world-meaning friends and therefore lovely by definition.])
So, here I am. It’s a clean break with the past – a new account as opposed to reactivating my old one. I let the old one get out of control. This one I will keep a tighter grip on and just use as a means to guide people to more erudite pensées such as this. It means I’m no longer the first Ben Jeapes on Facebook … well, technically I suppose I am since that account is still there, just dormant. But anyway. And any former Facebook friends – is there another way of saying this? ffriends, with a silent eff? Well there is now – any former ffriends who want to stay ffriends will have to renew the invite, though I won’t just blindly accept invitations from anyone; there are people I can live without being ffriends with even if they happen to be friends. No offence, just … you know. And if you don’t know, learn.
Onwards with the big adventure … and I’ll try to ignore Twitter. Really, really hard.