Farewell Facetube

To paraphrase James May, I’m giving up Youbook for good. LinkedOut is next.

I’ve never been very good with “networking” which is probably why I don’t sell as many books as I’d like, but FB always made me itch.

Apart from the inordinate amount of unproductive time it can suck from you, the privacy issues, the voyeuristic, stalker-vibe involved, and the evil, I guess I never felt comfortable with the synthetic personal relationships it fosters.

Yes, I can hear some of you shouting at me, “Facebook allows me to make new friends, catch up with old friends, and keep contact with family who are far away.”

Fine.

But how often do you go and actually see those people? I mean, you know, in person over a cup of coffee or adult beverage perhaps? How often do you pick up the phone and call to talk about stuff? Posting a 100 words and the odd picture really isn’t what relationships are built on, but it’s safe.

Tweeting, texting, FB, etc, all place a barrier of electrons between us and the recipient of our communication. People can’t hear our tone of voice, or see our expressions, or posture. We can manipulate our image to our best advantage which we all do, intentionally or not. It is much too easy to hide our real selves on the other side of miles of fiber-optic cable, never having to be truly vulnerable to the people we have “friended.”

“Oh, but aren’t you the hypocrite,” you cry. “People in glass blogs [see what I did there?] shouldn’t throw stones!”

And you would be correct, if this rathole on the internet were merely a networking device. I will admit before God and man that it started that way, but if that’s all this was, it would be gone too. Chewing Glass has become my little way to howl at the moon, tilt at windmills, indulge my silly side and occasionally share my thinking/fighting/struggling with whoever stops by. If from time to time I accidentally say something edifying, then it’s worth it. But I’m not going to pretend that any of you are going to come lift a stein with me this weekend.

In the final analysis, I fall in the camp of Henry Adams who said, “One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.”

S’ok. If we don’t get around to it now, we’ll have the hereafter to catch up.