This weekend, for the fourth time, a friend accosted me and angrily berated me for not being reachable by Facebook.
This diary is a letter to all of you out there who may have crossed this same line with one of your own friends.
It's time to stop. Just stop.
You may have decided that Facebook is the way you would like to interact with "the world out there" from now on. You may take comfort in knowing that many others have made the same decision. I congratulate you.
You may enjoy that you now have the ability to delve into your past and locate old friends, old acquaintances, old flames, and draw them back into your life. Have a pat on the back.
You may enjoy watching your count of friends rocket into the stratosphere, and even revel quietly when your count surpasses someone else's. Bully for you.
But the next time you tug on my sleeve and give me guilt because you can't "friend" me, I'm going full meltdown.
You have been warned.
I have lots of reasons for not wanting to play in your sandbox. I know you heard them, but you didn't listen, so here they are again.
1. You're already my friend, or you're not.
If you're already my friend, I sincerely hope that our Facebook status or lack thereof has not diminished your view or value of that friendship. I still have an e-mail address and a telephone, by the way. You remember those.
If you're not already my friend, there is probably a reason for that. Pardon me if the fact that you carved out 7.2 precious seconds from your busy to suggest via template that we become friends lacks in my estimation a certain sincerity.
If you were my friend a long time ago, or perhaps a girlfriend, there is probably also a reason that we no longer speak. You should not take this as a sign that you are inferior. A human life has many doors, and people enter and leave. Brevity is not the sign of a failed relationship; perhaps instead it is the sign of a complete one.
2. I don't have time.
I'm working to keep my job. I'm looking for a new job. I have a wife and a child who require my focus, attention, and love. Sometimes I need to be by myself. I need to write and create.
I am out of time.
A few of you have explained to me that Facebook will actually save me time. I don't believe you.
At all.
3. You Facebook people are starting to scare me.
In recent months, I have read and heard stories of marriages scuttled when spouses discovered the secret lives of their husbands or wives on Facebook. I have heard of friendships destroyed by Faceboook misunderstandings, or Facebook feuds.
I have been at parties and seen people surrounded by actual human beings, Facebooking away as if they were all alone.
During the holidays, at a restaurant, my daughter and I sat beside six ex-high school friends reunited from their separate colleges. And instead of talking about what they'd done and learned and experienced for the past four months, they spent an hour this way:
"And so Halley MySpaced me, so I Facebooked Jim and said, 'You have to text her and tell her to stop MySpacing me.' So she Facebooks me back and she's like..." Ad nauseam.
I wanted to ram a chopstick up my nose and into my brain.
I don't think it's insane to question whether as a culture we are diminishing our capability to interact face to face with sincerity and depth, and to examine what impact social networking technology has in that process. I don't think it's insane to question how much time we spend tethered to a computer or wireless device, and whether the quality of those interactions are, or will ever be, to the standards of genuine human touch.
So when you question my resistance to Facebook in such an insistent and almost cultish manner, I can't help but wonder if there's any limit to misery's longing for company.