FACEBOOK: you're doing it wrong

This is an actual transcription of an actual Facebook post, just a normal everyday post with the names changed, which for some reason made me want to lean over and howl.

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  Angelina Bromide

  Outlook Express is down--again!!! Apologies if anyone is trying to e-mail me, this is ridiculous.

  Like · · Share · 9 hours ago ·
  

  • Dory Rowboat likes this.
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    Hermione Haymaker  Its been down for me most of the day.

    8 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1
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    Sydney Barrely Sycophant  Working now, Ange.

    8 hours ago · Like · 1
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    Buffy Perseid Meteorshower  I thought you were ignoring me... Lol. :) glad you are back!!!

    7 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1
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    Angelina Bromide Oh god, what a day!! I had loads of e-mails to return...and everyone thought I was blowing them off. Douglas, it's back now, you're right. Fingers crossed it STAYS that way.

    
    
    
    

    

    
    

    
    

    You see, THIS is why. Why Facebook. Why Facebook makes. Makes us all sick.

    
    

    I mean, emotionally sick. Some study has just come out saying that the average Facebook user feels worse after going on Facebook than they did before. Nobody can figure out why.

    
    

    Nobody can figure out that blatant narcissism, relentless self-promotion/impression management, and a chronic empathy void has turned many Facebook users into ruthless jackals who will eat their best friend's heart if it will get them more "likes" in a day.

    
    

    Nobody can figure out that if you're not quite up to snuff on the empathy void issue, you might be the eaten rather than the eater. This definitely means you'll feel worse after you go on Facebook than you did before.
    
    
    
    

    

    
    

    
    

    We should give seminars, in fact probably somebody already DOES give seminars, maybe that self-help shithead who made all those people stay in the sweat lodge until they died, of how to carefully manage your Facebook image in a few thousand easy lessons. First thing is to boost your sense of desirability, nay, indispensibility! This involves things like fussing to your friends that  if your email goes down for even a few seconds, those pesky Nobel Prize people won't wait around to tell you about your astrophysics nomination and will just pass it along to someone else.

    
    

    Or what about those guys you've been dangling for months, the ones that have been begging you to sign on for your own reality TV show, How Hip Is That (And You're Not)? Will they finally get tired of all the coy bullshit you've been handing them and give you just one more very-last-chance and YOUR EMAIL WON'T BE WORKING so you won't even GET it and my GOD??
    
    
    
    

    

    
    

    
    

    But then it's all resolved and you get it and then lol, ; ) and : O and +**%, and you get a thousand fawning gushing congratulatory Facebook posts in a subtle ploy to actually be ON your show which is the only reason they bother with you anyway, but nobody tells you because they all think you're such a shallow bitch and probably wouldn't even

    
    

    What I hate about Facebook is the dishonest way this is all expressed. It's slipped in oh-so-casually, a ploy to make everybody else feel a little less popular, their lives a little more shabby and frayed around the edges. Facebook gives you license for a subtle form of bullyism that can easily be denied because it all comes out in such an innocuous, throwaway manner. In fact, the more casual the better, so everyone knows you don't really care. The effect is that your nose is constantly being rubbed in their fabulousness and you feel bad without knowing why.  It's like having a can of Reddi-Whip forced down your throat while your torturer casually pushes down on the nozzle until it's completely empty.

    
    
    
    

    

    
    
    

    But no metaphor can be quite as bad as the real thing. These people seem to be involved in one endless, rollicking lol-party only open to those exclusive 5000 close, personal friends who have been invited, and if they're out of touch with each other even for a few seconds, their universe collapses and they turn into the human equivalent of a black hole.

    
    

    
    http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
    

    
    

    
    

    http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

The day Marty Scorsese became my friend. . . sort of

I don't have time to be writing this cuzzadafact that my hubby and me will be leaving in a minute to have brunch at a Chinese restaurant we love. We're celebrating something amazing that happened to me last night, something closely connected to my novel The Glass Character, but I can't tell you what it is yet. Let the egg incubate for a while.

It's these phony Facebook pages. Yes, I know, they are probably ubiquitous and usually involve big Hollywood stars. I honestly wonder how many big Hollywood stars have TIME to keep a personal FB page. Anyway, one day a while back I stumbled on a so-called page for Martin Scorsese. There were at least half-a-dozen sites for him, mostly fan sites you'd follow.

I got curious. Hey, what if one of them IS his real FB page? It looks like you can send a friend request.  I sent.

Months went by and I forgot all about it. Today  I got a notice in my inbox that, yes, Martin Scorsese was now my friend! I was absolutely flabbergasted. Soon I'd be hobnobbing with all the moguls and glamor-pusses of the Silver Screen. Yeeee-owdimus!

But then, I looked a little more closely.

The whole page looked a little "off", somehow. There wasn't much information of any kind. But it plainly  said "in a relationship with Marina Filoc". I tried to find out anything about her, but could only determine she could not speak English and worked at a shiatsu clinic.

One of Marty's "posts" pictured Billy Wilder's grave with a caption that read something like, Do not say I am stupid, am only writer. There followed a FLOOD of fawning, ingratiating comments about the post, praising Marty's articulate brilliance. "Am only writer"! Look how he plays with the idiom, ignores it, turns it on its ear! Look how he stands up to the mundane rules of grammar! He is a genius! It went on and on. Oh, Mr. Scorsese, thank you for allowing me to be your friend, I love your work always, I love Taxi Driver, is my favorit movie when it come on theTV at night, etc. etc., hundreds of them.

Uh.

People.

It's not him.

Scorsese has been married to the same woman for years, and her name ain't Marina Filoc. Marina Filoc, who on one site stated that she working her English ver hard to improve, is trying to cash in by hitching her rickety wagon to his oblivious star. Surely if she's Marty's main squeeze, she's going to have lots of attention, plenty of offers for. . . whatever.  I guess there are no rules against that sort of thing, against trying to siphon something off in case all that drooling drivel slops over the edge of the bowl. 

But it does make you wonder how many other FB pages are completely bogus. After all, it's not strung very tight, is it? You can pretty much be anyone you want to. A 20-year-old shiatsu therapist can suddenly become one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood history, and instantly have thousands of people fawning all over her and believing her without question.

Given the level of discernment we see in the Facebook community, who's going to know the difference?


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm