Facebook Phobia

I don't know about you, but is there something icky about the plethora of all the social networking sites and their recent extreme popularity? I mean, we all love our friends -- they're our guides, our mentors, our compatriots. But do we really want to know what they had for breakfast? (If I ask -- absolutely, I do want to know. But please don't volunteer that info, and don't send it to a hundred of your buddies.)

Of course, this message is being written on a so-called social networking site, so there is some irony here, but the narcissism of lists like 25 Things You Didn't Know About Me and other minutae seems a little excessive. And that's not including the little fingernail parings of 'communication' called Twitter.

We all like to be noticed and we all want to have a public face, but in my estimation, there's a cost; it seems to cheapen the real, authentic communication going on around us. Phone calls, personal emails, a real conversation between real people -- that's the goal, that's the good stuff. A contentless post going out to all our 'friends' just seems to be a waste of my, yours, and everyone else's hard won time and concentration.

Of course, like a good friend told me last night, "For better or for worse, it's the way things are done now." So I'll reluctantly join Facebook (but not Twitter; hell no.) I'll reconnect with some old friends I should have connected with already. But to me words and feelings are precious; communication is vital. I don't want to cheapen my real emotion for my friends with faux information and idle chatter. And no, I don't want to know what you had for breakfast.

But maybe that's just me.