Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Why Facebook Holds Little Fascination

At first, it was kind of cool to be put back into contact with people I hadn't thought about for thirty years.

The problem is, of course, that times change, circumstances change, and people that you're arbitrarily thrown together with in high school -- people the sixteen-year-old you thought you knew -- they change too.

If I say you're a friend on Facebook, it's because I consider you a friend. Or at least a nodding acquaintance, right? Somebody I've shared some experiences with. A friend, you would think, would be the sort of person who'd be at least somewhat open to input from me.

So when a high-school acquaintance -- not really a friend; we didn't really move in the same circles -- forwarded me a truly loathsome bit of racist cant, expecting me to giggle and forward it on to all my right-thinking friends -- this after I asked him last year please not to forward any more 9-12/Glenn Beck/Birther sludge to me, so I thought he understood my stance on these matters -- I gave him some friendly input, in the form of an email repeating my request not to send me such things. (That, at least, was the gist of what I said. There may have been some slightly intemperate language, but this sort of thing, well, pisses me off real bad.)

(I'm not linking to the disgusting thing that angered me, but google "Larmondo 'Flair' Allen" if you're curious.)

His response to me this morning was (and this is a verbatim copy-and-paste, the entire body of the email) "your [sic] a sad little man."

At my riposte begging to be taken off his distro list, he replied "If you feel that calling me a racist helps you sleep at night, you go on ahead. The world will keep on turning without either one of us..."

No, dude, it's not really got much to do with me sleeping at night, or the globe's continued rotation. It's more that what you sent me was real fuckin' racist, and if you can't see that, well, if the shoe fits...

So that's why I don't haunt Facebook very much. People can really suck at the whole humanity thing.

(If you haven't recently sent me any vile racist sludge, then we're still cool on Facebook. Simple as that.)

3 comments:

Bobby Lightfoot said...

Internets have turned me into a late-blooming student of Apostrophe in all it's forms.

Neddie said...

Jesus Christ, Bobby, your a real fuckin racist in you're dotage, aren't you. Its literally a shame.

Bobby Lightfoot said...

Your a sad lil' man.