Please Check One
By Joshilyn Jackson
Oh Facebook! You invasive wormlike addictive awful thing! You keep finding new ways to torment me and make me insane, and yet, and yet, I keep coming back to you.
In the springtime of my love affair with Facebook, I wanted to take it everywhere.So---I cleverly put it on my Blackberry. (Here the italics indicate that a heavy-handed ironic tone is spreading and dripping in a thick, sludgy gloss all OVER that word.) I then found that I never WENT anymore, because Lordy, but D J Cracky B has a small screen. (Yes, I DID name my blackberry. You didn't?)
And the DJ is SLOW to load web content. I also stopped posting to Facebook, because I am not 14 and therefore can't thumbtype at the speed of sound. So instead of more Facebook at convenient times, like when I am boredly waiting for my oil to be changed and the only reading material available is a copy of People magazine SO old it believes Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt are the It Couple, I went to almost NO Facebook.
I took Facebook off of the DJ, thinking it would revert back to sending me email updates to draw me to it. Now I get no updates on the DJ or my comp, so a thousand vital things I need to know to be a fully realized and content human slide by EVERY DAY. (Okay, I could pass on the "Jen got a really good parking spot! YAY!" stuff, but things HAPPEN on the FB....like Mir could post a gluten free muffin recipe that actually tastes like muffins, and I sincerely need that before I have to take snack down to Maisy's school next week.)
The ALMOST worst part? Around the same time that Facebook stopped telling me things I want it to tell me, it started telling OTHER people things about me I don't necessarily want broadcast. It found my Barnes & Noble account. It found my Netflix account. I think it is worming around the internet SEEKING my email address and linking that address to my Facebook account, all without me knowing.
I suspect that Facebook is letting people SEE my Netflix??? Is FACEBOOK telling you that I recently watched a fetal Tom Cruise peering out from under his shaggy bangs and pretending to a woodsprite man while Tim Curry sprounced about in hooved shoes and big horns, bellowing out peels of demonic laughter?
If Facebook is telling you that I watched LEGEND, dude, no, that wasn't me. That was the kids. Or the dog. Or, um, maybe people broke into my house and tied me up and watched that and left.
OKAY FINE IT WAS ME BUT I HAD THE FLU AND IT WAS COMFORTINGLY NOSTALGIC STOP JUDGING ME.
Even worse?
Facebook has suddenly put LIKE buttons by all my BOOKS on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Look at this—here is the upcoming paperback for Backseat Saints and if you have a facebook account and if facebook has wormed around and linked them up, you will see the book now has a LIKE button by it.
No one likes it yet. This is making me INSANE. I want a little NUMBER. I am SO tempted to click it, myself! If I click the thing and say *I* like it, facebook will tell you, and how sad will THAT be, that *I* "like" my own books.
Well, okay, no, it isn't sad, because I DO like my own books. But it WILL be sad if...I am the ONLY one. HA!
That like button? By every book I wrote and/or will write on more and more sites every day?
Lord, it feels like publishing books has put me back into Workman Middle School...Each book on each page with a LIKE button is a separate sad, shy girl's note to THE WHOLE WORLD with a little box to check. I do not need, trust me, another way to obnoxiously navel gaze, nor do I need another way to find myself wanting.
Has Facebook found YOU and outed you on your Big Business info-tainment accounts? Do you want it to? Can you see my films? WILL you think less of me if you discover that, FINE, OKAY, I have Happy Gilmore in my Q?
Is this invasive or just how life is and I should shut up, and by the way? While I am asking questions? I just want to say that I like you, and ask, do you like me? Pls check one ___ Yes ____No ____Kinda, but not enough to say so if Facebook is just going to TELL everyone, sheesh.
