{"id":242,"date":"2009-11-07T15:52:53","date_gmt":"2009-11-07T15:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.wordpress.com\/?p=242"},"modified":"2009-11-07T15:52:53","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T15:52:53","slug":"fighting-off-the-facebook-empire-tentacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/11\/07\/fighting-off-the-facebook-empire-tentacles\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Off the Facebook Empire Tentacles"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I haven’t been posting much lately, my time being usurped with building a wicked TinkerToy airplane for my daughter and finishing a novel that seems unending, but here’s a recent struggle with the encroaching social network world: A couple mornings ago I was here at my keyboard, half-awake, yawning as I read the Times and email, and what do we have here? An innocent request from a friend to join Facebook in my Inbox, asking if she could add me as a Friend. No matter how much I make fun of Facebook, I’m certainly aware that most of the people I know and like are on it, and what the heck, why not join? Be polite? What am I supposed to do, deny “friend” status to a nice person I like? So I click on the icon to join, and that’s where the descent to Hell begins. I get a screen that has three innocent questions (or is it four?), name, email address, password, and age. (Why does that matter?)\u00a0
\nMy biggest mistake was hitting Return.
\nImmediately I regret this rash act of foolishness. That’s only Step One, and since there were four more steps (or is it five?) to complete the process, and I have a ton of email to answer and a book to review and a novel to finish and my daughter to dress and get ready for preschool . . . well, you get the drift. I close the window, glad I dodged that time-suck bullet. But no. Next I’m hit with a blizzard of Friends requests. The fact that I didn’t fill in all the data or stumble through all the Steps doesn’t seem to matter. Suddenly an enormous tentacle reaches in the window and wraps around my face, gargantuan suckers popping out my eyeballs like Spanish olives, a tentacle like the one in that so-bad-it’s-good Stephen King mishmash known as The Mist<\/em> (2008)\u2014it’s actually fog in the movie, but they obviously don’t want to call it that, to get confused with The Fog<\/em> (1980), starring the unforgettable Adrienne Barbeau. Did I forget to finish setting up my account? Forget to upload a glam photo? Forget to list my favorite songs\/movies\/turtle names?
\nNow I’m the bad guy, the one who doesn’t answer your friend requests. Forgive me. I won’t go there again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I haven’t been posting much lately, my time being usurped with building a wicked TinkerToy airplane for my daughter and finishing a novel that seems unending, but here’s a recent struggle with the encroaching social network world: A couple … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t