Yeah, I know; it’s been a while, but that’s another half-written tale of amateurish failure, economic irresponsibility, and a vicious and unprovoked attack by Scandinavian Ninjas that’ll have to wait until another day. However, there’s something I need to deal with first:
I want to finally and publically address the question that I have been asked with increasing and depressing regularity over the past six or eight months: No, I am not on Facebook. I have an email address. And no: you cannot fucking have it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a luddite or anything. I’m aware of Facebook and know what it is: a half-assed Web page with a list of your friends, pictures of where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing, and open “status” messages telling these “friends” what you’re doing right fucking now. I’m also aware that the technology writers call this “social networking,” and that smart people call it “An ironclad trail of admissible evidence.” I’m a firm believer that, if you want to know what I’ve been up to, you can find out the old-fashioned way by getting a Goddamned warrant. Until then, you can go to hell.
Any time some acquaintance asks me if I’m on Facebook, I want to ask them, “Why? What the fuck do you care what I’m doing? Look: I have a… unique lifestyle. At any given time there’s a good chance that what I’m doing is of questionable morality, if not out-and-out legality. And it’s a short leap in the limited logic of a cop between a list of friends and a flowchart of known co-conspirators. So if you’re wondering what I’m up to, unless the answer is ‘Testing the flammability of Jim Beam on your Prius’s battery bank,’ you should appreciate the plausible deniability and leave me the fuck alone.”
Look, I’m in my mid-thirties, which means that most of my contemporaries have steady careers, spouses and maybe kids, and have left behind the kind of casual madness upon which I thrive. No matter how close we may have once been, I would have no place on their Facebook “Wall”:
- Jeff added a note: My daughter just took her first steps!
- Donna added a note: My husband just got promoted, and to celebrate, well… I’m posting this from a CRUISE SHIP!
- Rob added a note: Last night I got kicked off the XBox Live Tiger Woods Golf Channel for telling a nice woman from Dallas that she had a swing like John Holmes after a month of saltpeter, Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Ron Jeremy poking his taint with a Bic barbecue lighter. Thankfully, I horked slightly-used Jagermeister and fried the mic before I could REALLY get rolling. My gamertag’s oHgODiTbURNS if anyone wants a friendly game!
But the final nail in Facebook’s coffin for me was earlier this week, when I got a voice mail from an old girlfriend I dated WELL after college, which said: “Oh my God; I was on Facebook and, well, did you know that [girl I knew in high school’s name REDACTED] married some dude from [country REDACTED], and moved to [trendy REDACTED city with shitty weather and vastly overrated coffee, and besides: the Red Sox kick the shit out of their REDACTED team, REDACTED Griffey, Jr. or no Ken REDACTED, Jr.]?”
She went on to tell me details about a bunch of people from my past that she’s come across on Facebook… people that she has no reason to or way of knowing except that she met one or two of them while she and I were dating, and she “met” the rest of them through some labyrinthine web of Facebook “friends” that they’ve put together. And considering that Facebook just announced that they’ve signed on their 150-millionth member, each of which no doubt slapping together lists of “friends” like third-graders desperately trying to put together a network of enough warm body support to give the school bully at least a choice of people whose head to flush down the toilet, it means that, on an infinite timeline, I’m going to involuntarily be digitally slapped face to face with some prick whose number I threw out for a good reason.
Actually, it wouldn’t even be an infinite timeline; considering I’m only three degrees from Kevin Fucking Bacon (I’ve done comedy shows with Dane Cook, who ruined Stuck On You with Googy Gress, who wandered unknown through Frost/Nixon, with Kevin Bacon), I figure it would take about three days on Facebook before I got a “poke” from [lacrosse jock I went to school with who could kick the shit out of me REDACTED], who to this day thinks I talked shit about his sister on [50,000 watt major market radio station audible in four New England states REDACTED]. Which I categorically deny; I have no memory of doing this, and even if I wanted to tell tales out of school about the girl, they don’t let you use the word “blumpkin” on the radio.
I don’t need or want to use Facebook to get in touch with people I knew in, say, high school. The guys I liked in high school I’m generally still friends with and therefore know what they’re up to. The girls I liked in high school are still seventeen with perfect tits and a nearly-uncontrollable yen to dry-hump in the back of a Mazda GLC… in my head. And frankly, I fucking like them that way. Any catch-up story they have to tell me now is likely to start with, “I’m pregnant with…”, and the only way that becomes a more interesting story than the ones that occassionally play in my head when I’m bored at work is if the next word out of their mouth is “C’thulhu.”
Look: I have recently had a few girls from my past find me through this shitty rag and email me, and that’s great. It was nice to hear from them… but I don’t need to hear from any more of them, okay? Ignorance is bliss. I’m taking the fucking blue pill. If you’re reading this, just take my word for it: I’m fine, and I guarantee you that I’m having more fun than you. However, in the interest of heading off any uncomfortable emails that I need to ignore, please consider this my personalized “Wall”, okay?
- A message to Jane: For the last time, it wasn’t me who got drunk and told my friends that your yeast infection made me so itchy I wanted to take my glans off with fine grit sandpaper. It was you. Now don’t contact me again.
- A message to Tami: Yes, I am aware that you warned me that you liked it kinky, and yes, I got my Zippo working again. However, every time I light a cigarette it smells like someone’s ruining a salmon steak on a charcoal grill. Now don’t contact me again.
- A message to Chris: Look, I understand that you have it on tape, but a “Two-Course Guatemalan Yam Feast” is different than a “Blumpkin,” which means I was talking about Tami, not you. Now don’t contact me again.
[tags]Facebook, dark humor, satire[/tags]
So what you’re sayin’ is….I can friend you on XBOX LIVE?????? Not that you need more fat bearded dudes from Ohio trying to friend you on the intarweb.
Yep, I’m Rob Reuter. I married an Italian girl from New York with a hot temper and we had a baby together. We live in a raised ranch in Maryland now and have a poodle named “cuddles”. We root for Derek Jeter and Eli Manning and think that alcohol is sinful. I am an army chaplain now. I became born again in 2006 and sold this evil blog to a friend of mine from high school named Casey. I can’t wait to tell everyone all of this information at the reunion. I just wish you’d stop pretending that you are me, Casey.
@The Damonowskivich – You could (although that’s not my real gamertag), but I must warn you that I’m not that much fun to play with. I irritate people when I play with them online, since I tend to stop playing for a few minutes after every cut scene in the Tomb Raider games. Plus, I make a lot of mistakes because my controller’s awful sticky.
@”Rob Reuter” – Not only is identity theft a felony, but if you’re gonna risk your freedom doing it, you should pick someone with a better reputation. Then again “Rob,” if I remember correctly, your high school fake ID was under the name “Manny Goebbels,” so clearly this is a lifelong self-destructive streak. Now as I recall, you went to an Ivy League school to study biology, so why don’t you quit fucking around and do something useful like cure lung cancer or reverse liver disease, and leave the Internet dick jokes to those of us who went to substandard schools to major in useless, dead-end subjects (Print Journalism! Christ, I might as well have joined the whale oil trade…)?
I wish I had more energy to turn this into a full-blown identity theft prank. But somehow I think that even if went all the way and got reconstructive surgery, a psycho-looking brother, and a smoking habit, you still wouldn’t bother to come to the reunion. Not that you wouldn’t be curiously interested in that level of bat-shit craziness in some way, but because you are probably just that lazy. Oh well, back to that cancer cure I guess.
err, you know who I meant.
Let’s face it this particular rant is just a pretentious wank. I appreciate a good pretentious wank. I majored in being a pretentious wanker. So when you have decided that blowing yourself with the janitors Dyson just isn\’t doing it for you will you then be my friend on facebook? We both know you will inevitably join up as you are just another sad member of the herd trying desperately to be a standout. If there were awards for literary masturbation you would surely win a prize! Are you sure you didn\’t get the yeast infection from your ring finger?
Why would I be your friend on Facebook? Based on your comment, you clearly don’t know me at all.
And it will be a cold day in hell, sir, when a Dyson suckjob doesn’t “do it for me,” so your truculent little “argument” is moot right out of the gate.
But since you found this crappy little rag based on the Google search “how to find out if friend request rejected”, I’d feel bad if I wasted your time with my “pretentious wank” without at least giving you the answer. So, based on your charming personality, you can tell your friend request was rejected because, well, you made one.
Either way I couldn’t respond to your friend request even if I wanted to… ten months after this post, and I’m still not on Facebook.
Thanks for reading!