thomas leverett weblog

quit facebook, stop eating dairy

No, I probably won't. Monday is quit facebook day, but according to this article, 24,000 may quit, but over 400,000,000 won't. Count me among the 400,000,000. I'm even mad at the ones who are quitting, because I've come to love having these people in my life in some way or another, as if I saw them in the hallway each day and said "how's it going?" and let them show me pictures of the new pool out back once in a while. They leave, I'll miss them.

Now about the privacy thing- I only vaguely understand it. Yes, I find myself, because of being friends with A, looking at B's pictures in which B tagged A. B didn't necessarily want me seeing those pictures. A is like me, one of those bridge characters, who counts among our friends fundamentalists and anarchists, Palestinians and Jews, gays and gay-boycotters, democrats and republicans. People who look for trouble could sweep through my site and find all kinds of it. But I've assumed nothing is private, right from the start. And some of it, yes, I probably wouldn't want the world to know. I could certainly not blame others who feel that way.

Actually the only people I really object to knowing all this stuff is the advertisers. They know I'm 56, so they keep telling me that if I'm 56, I've just won an iPad. They also know I'd rather have an iPad than, say, a Ferrari, because if it were the other way around, they'd be telling me that if I were 56, I'd just won a Ferrari. So, the other day I got tired of this and went into Facebook, and changed my birth year from 1954 to 1900. OK guys, I'm 110. Now sell me an iPad.

Lo and behold, Facebook didn't buy it; they wouldn't let me change my birth year. They had a keen nose for fraud, I guess. I was slightly disturbed by my own lack of control over my birthdate. I assume that if I'd lowered it two, or maybe three years, they'd have let me do it?

Here's to say, I feel strongly both ways. I love and hate Facebook. I resent their intrusion on my privacy; I love intruding on everyone else's. I've gone places I'd only have dreamed of; I sense, often, that too many people know too much about me. I live in this world. My secrets ride the rough current at the top of the falls. And I've lost the paddle.

posted by tom @ 6:37 PM