Facebook

I opened a Facebook account and was deluged with hundreds of requests for friend status from people I've never heard of (plus a few I did know).

I was horrified. You don't make friends by pressing a button. Friendship is the result of companionship, working on things together, lunches, coffee, frequent contact. The whole Facebook thing is a fraud. I did learn that the word, friend, in Facebook language means approval. You approve of some stranger by asking to be a friend.

I decided I wanted to live in the real world, not this synthetic world of a social medium, so I've learned how to scrape away all those alleged friends. I'll leave the account open and think if I can put it so some legitimate use somehow, but it has me wondering about this country and the manipulators of its people.

As one of my real friends pointed out, if it's free, the product is you. Facebook and others would soon be monitoring my every taste and habit, to sell stuff to me or use me in some yet to be seen way.