I hate Facebook and all the rest

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S'true. Despite being on Facebook and other networking sites, I hate them.

By the time you get to the end of this column, you will agree with me.

I hate those websites.

A lot.

More than a lot.

To explain, I must derail your train of thought for a moment.

Alfred Lord Tennyson didn't have Facebook et al in the 1950s when he was writing his poetry. But he did have the same kind of thoughts we have today.

In Memoriam: 27

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

A Vogon poetry recital.

Just for the record, I detest poetry with very few exceptions and believe most poets should be fed to a Vogon. A Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is too good for them. But in this case, I have to resort to Tennyson 'cause his words are so famous that you should now have an idea of where I'm headed.

Regardless of whether I share Tennyson's expressed sentiment, I have to admit to being in the loser's position as he describes.

The internet just makes it worse. Consider Doc. You may not know Doc. For that matter, I can't say I know Doc, beyond the hours spent in chat rooms with him, emails and other forms of highly impersonal electronic communication.

YAY DOC!

If you don't know Doc, well, dang. How do you describe the color red to a a person blind since birth? (Doc is blind, BTW, but lost his sight only a couple of years ago). If you don't know Doc, you have missed meeting one of the most admirable human beings to ever walk the earth.

He ranks No. 1 of all the people on earth whom I most want to meet face to face.

And now, Dammitall, I don't know if he's even alive. Doc was piggbybacking some time back on a neighbor's internet connection. When the neighbor moved, Doc lost his connection. As he will not have a phone, and I don't have his address, getting ahold of him is extremely difficult. Doc is a very private person and keeps it that way.

Doc, as of our last communication, was not in great health.

Definitely not Doc.

To answer your next question, yeah I tried. No one on his FB "friends" list will pass along any word of him or his condition. I 'spect his real friends are not part of his FB group or are respecting his wishes and protecting his privacy.

I must also admit, I know Doc from the internet. That's it. He could be the world's most intense asshat (but I doubt it.) Certainly there are many many people who've made online friendships and then upon meeting face to face found out reality is FAR different from what they expected.

Now do you see why I hate FB et al?

Doc is only at the top of the list of people I want to someday meet in person. There are many many others. Some are in the United States, Ireland, Washington state, Alaska, New Jersey, California, places I can't easily get to. Some are on the North American continent. Some are in Africa, China, Australia, Europe, South America.

Is the situation any clearer?

In order to actually meet all these people, I'd need to be a multi-millionaire. That's the only way I could either visit all these places OR pay their way for them to come visit me. Despite our associations being only electronically (internet, phone etc), some of these folks are closer to me than some of my family.

Of course being a realist, I have to admit that the chances of some of them being an asshat or them considering me to be an asshat is pretty good. We'll meet, sparks will fly and we'll part company to never speak again, electronically or otherwise.

Still, I want to have that chance.

A few of these folks I will get to meet. But only a few and only after some detailed and probably expensive planning.

I have managed to meet a few folks I once only knew by the internet. They are great friends today I will see them again sooner or later.

But most of these people, eventually one of us will be gone and we'll never get to meet on this side of reality.


And that is why I hate Facebook and all the rest of today's modern marvels that are shrinking our world in one respect but making it infinitely larger in another.