I don’t know how it happened. Well, okay, I do. A confluence of influences. Influence conflued.<\/p>\n
Apart from the general grumpy old mannish acceptance that it really isn’t going to go away no matter how hard I ignore it …<\/p>\n
… 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.])<\/p>\n
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 pens\u00e9es 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.<\/p>\n
Onwards with the big adventure … and I’ll try to ignore Twitter. Really, really hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … … Continue reading