A total failure on Facebook

After three years on Facebook and only a handful of friends, this guy admits he just doesn't understand social networking.

from the January 10, 2008 edition

Page 2 of 2

Page 1 | 2

As you are no doubt thinking, such a notion is almost Victorian in its quaintness. I might as well write letters to people, too.

This, of course, is why I have only four friends. And when you have so few friends, there are other problems. By accepting my next friend request, in some ways I will be designating that person as my fifth closest friend online. And that's just a little too much pressure to put on a friendship. So far, no one else has quite made the cut.

It seems especially odd when I get a friend request from someone I don't know. Why do people I have never heard of send me friend requests? Cass, Dave, Ryan, and Beth, I'm deeply sorry. I've never met you before, but thanks for the friend requests. Rest assured that they are still on my entry page, mainly because until recently I was so dumb that I thought you would find out if I rejected you.

I knew there was an "ignore" button, but it seemed a harsh way to treat a stranger. All this time, I have instead been manually ignoring these friend requests. Manual ignoring is something I have always excelled at, and I am reluctant to hand over the controls of my ignoring to a computer. I'm old-fashioned that way.

In some ways, I'm just not an open enough person to be on Facebook. The status line where you tell everyone what you are doing right now terrifies me.

First of all, you don't need to know what I am doing right now. And I especially don't like that my status will be instantly broadcast to all my friends. OK, there are only four of them, but you get the point.

And even if I did want to broadcast my status, you always have to put something witty there so you seem interesting. Look around and it appears that everyone has a snappy line. "Joe Lavin is at work," or "Joe Lavin is writing a snarky article about Facebook" just won't cut it.

To be accurate, next time I think I'll just put up, "Joe Lavin is not accepting friend requests at this time."

1 | Page 2