Dancing to the Music

"This is fact not fiction/for the first time/in years" - DCFC, "Lack of Color"

I am not quite sure if it's my bulging eyes complaining or my tummy. Yes, I threw in the towel after months of tenacious stonewalling the more tenacious badgering of friends to join FB. This isn't exactly news - me and conformity.

Because I am a wimp, my fisherman's cap is in the ring of this Info-era's "word-community" where everybody tries to be Socratic in their dialogue and Sarte in their meta-philosopy. Even the 'inside jokes' I observed, are meta-jokes. Nostalgia galore. Buckets of inanity - me, gamely joining the pack. Typical, so typical.

Barely a week into it, it's like going to a circus, a grotesque one, and I bump into friendly creatures who in their best intentions, try to elevate the literary degradation of this social network to at least, Grade 6.

Truth to tell, I prefer the laidback spirit of FS, my original social network, where most of my transactions are still performed. With FB, it's more intense - the pressure to throw in your bits of prose. I tell myself, no one is poking a gun and forcing you to respond to revelatory testaments and outrageous pronunciamentos. Yeah, I shall not be engulfed into this time-sucking endeavor. There's Kafka, Proust, Mann, beckoning to be read in the luxury of a daytime bed than being strapped into the PC reading what so and so ate for breakfast or know their emotional hoo-ha.

Is the world becoming friendly - people loosening up, more open to declare what used to be guarded as private? Is this public display of emotions sincere or artificial, just like those detritus of reality TV jammed on us or Dr. Phil or Oprah, Lord have merci?

This onslaught of private sentiments finding their forum in social networks - is this the new face of fascism? The horrors, the horrors. And sadly, I am one of its eager participants. Shame, shame, shame.

(doodles from www.nougart.net)