Not on Facebook, Not Sick in the Head

A few days ago, Slate.com and other sources ran a piece about human resources departments' seeing young applicants' lack of a presence on Facebook as a red flag that the employment candidate might not be right in the head.  Looking at the published responses to this article in which the authors go on about being addicted to Facebook, I wonder how and why human resources departments would favor an addictive personality who very likely will waste company time posting nonsense to a social networking site the real value of which is zero over someone who is somewhere else in real time.  My thoughts follow.

I am not on Facebook.  Once, I was.  But the adolescent pranks of the adult child of the exwife of a former high school friend who turned out to be a total jerk was making such a spectacle of himself that I had to go.  I friended him--though I resent this upstart noun of a verb that puts on the airs of an overrated, bitter cup of designer coffee--but he embarrassed me because his friends logged in as him while he slept and turned him into something he was not with the most outlandishly obscene words that were technically correct but completely inappropriate and left any onlooker with the impression  that I made poor choices when it comes to friends.  I had to go.  I didn't want to be judged by this son of a jerk who couldn't hold a job who couldn't hold a job.  Yuck.  No.  I work for a living.  A bit like being judged by the trick-or-treaters who come to my house.  I had to go.

I am not on Facebook.  Once, I was.  I did not upload a profile photo, however. As a result, every Swede who ever thought he knew me tried to (ugh) friend me.  I accepted each of them because I hate to be rude and most especially rude to total strangers.  Especially Swedish ones because they could be related to my grandfather, which is to say, me.  However, one day I thought, "Who are all these Swedes, anyway?  And have they ever met the man who was my grandfather from Sweden whom I never knew because...." And there I stopped because it's nobody's business.  It isn't even mine.  

I am not on Facebook.  I added a photo to cut down on Swedes, but then the high school people poured in.  I didn't want to be rude to them, but we were only there because we had graduated Danbury High School in 1984 and Facebook was there all those years later when they were fat and bald and selling real estate and trying to remake their conservative badass investment banker selves.  It was pretty the way landfills are pretty.

Let's face it:  some guy named Zuckerburger is getting rich on Facebook by exploiting us in the ungodliest of ways and we consider it a favor and show up to receive it.  Because it's free.   But bad things happen to good people who try not to be rude and who accept free things because they're there.   Here's an example.  There was the wife of the boy I knew in high school who cut off our friendship because his wife didn't like me but whose control over the marriage didn't stop him from emailing me just a few years ago to suggest we start an illicit affair, which really annoyed me because, goddamit, invite me over for dinner if you have any of those old feelings; I am not some cheap tart.  If you can't go the time and effort of baking a potato and sharing it at a common table with me and your wife, then get your mind out of the hotel room.  You're not that interesting, and you have made your choices.  The wife friended me.  Her husband?  He killed the illicit come-fuck-me email account.  The price of that potato is still in his pocket.  She had friended me to ler her husband know she knew all about it.  I didn't need to be there for that pillow fight.  I wonder if you see the problem here.  All I did was exist in the outer space we call the Internet.  Next thing I know, I am part of a marriage problem.  It didn't have to be that way, and it was a waste of my time.  

I am not on Facebook. I have my reasons.  As I sit in my living room listening to the night bugs (they have names but they have not friended me even though we go back a long way) making the music of summer lullabies and sipping a glass of wine and thinking of what I will say to an old friend who emailed me privately, who feels no need to turn our conversation into performance, into spectacle, because it is a conversation and not a show of Who He Is for the World to See, I am pondering what words might be worth reading.  I want to say something worthwhile because I care about words, about friendship, about time, about the music of summer.  Zuckerberg  will never know our secrets.  He won't hear the bugs, either.  People who don't actually have to worry about the high price of central air never do. 

I am not on Facebook.  I am alive and well in this world full of bugs and night and damp air and stars and a clock that will go off when it's time for me to go home.  When I go there, nobody will know what I had for breakfast.  Home has its secrets.  It is not on Facebook.  Stop by and see for yourself.  I'll make your breakfast, and I won't tell.