Commotion in the Pews

It was with great reluctance that I was dragged into the Facebook world a few years ago. But I kept hearing how you had to have a Facebook page if you were an author. So I made one. And an account for me as a non-author.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits!

I have enjoyed both to a great extent. The contact with old friends has been a delight, and I relish getting to know acquaintances via this particular social medium. (There’s got to be another Latin joke I could tell right about now, but I’ll spare you.) There are the occasional scams out on the site, some really vulgar and stupid people who contribute to strings I’m in – well, that might be me. I’m kind of vulgar and stupid on occasion. But the magic line has been drawn in the sand and crossed lately – by me. Yes, two lines, two sets of footprints, two angry entities.

First, I’m done acknowledging birthdays on Facebook. My friends for many years will not be shocked by this news. For the rest of the universe, I barely acknowledge my own birthday. I’m doing really well to get cards out to relatives in my nuclear family on time. I forget my niece and nephew until the last minute, and the spouses of my siblings have long ago given up on my pretending to send them cards. It’s not that I don’t like these people, but I’m just not a birthday guy. The story, if you must know, relates to my tragic childhood. Maybe not. Let’s just say that my birthday was overshadowed by a big holiday and since nobody else cared, I quit caring as well. (Except you, Mom. Sniff. You always loved me. And my wife – now I’m getting weepy. Okay, everyone except those two…)

This decision was motivated, in large part, by a posting by a friend about how “The few special people that remembered me yesterday really touched me on a day I thought others had forgotten… blah, blah, blah.” Yes, they were unhappy about some of us forgetting their birthday. I just want to know if they wasted their time counting birthday messages and likes on those posts and compared them to their friend list at the stroke of midnight. I can hear it now, “That creep Courtemanche didn’t send me a note – he’s the only one. I’m never going to wish him a happy birthday.”

Oh, the agony. I miss most of this stuff because I don’t live on Facebook. I enjoy it, but I don’t go back after I’ve been gone for 15 hours and catch up on all the stuff that happened in my absence. I have this thing called a life, and I’m trying to live it. (Would this be a bad time to remind you to hit the Facebook box on the right and go like my author page? No?)

The straw that broke this camel’s back, and sent me to the land of outlaws, came fairly recently. I knew that my anti-social use of social media was branding me as an outcast. But when the stern warning came from Facebook, I knew that I’d hit felony levels. Let me recount that moment for you as it happened.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **** **** ** ** ** ** **
There I was, sitting at the keyboard, hammering out friend requests like a drum of .45 caliber death from the barrel of a Thompson submachine gun. I slammed the enter key with gusto and the screen of my computer went as blank as the look on the puss of that doll at the diner when I asked if the bacon was Kosher.

The rap on the door came almost in the same whiskey-soaked breath. I lurched to my feet, kicked that rotten cat out of my way and threw the door open, brandishing my wireless mouse like a Roscoe. Two mugs who had met with a shovel in the face stood on my porch. “Whaddya want, boys? I got deadlines to meet and you two ain’t on the dance card.”

The short, nerdy one produced a wallet I.D. and flashed it in my face. “Facebook squad. Sit your keyster in that chair. We got issues with you and your friending of strangers. It ain’t pretty.”

I knew they had me trapped like a rat under a stove. I’d been hard at it when they knocked. Now I knew why the computer had shut off – they watch you like a hawk on that Facebook. The taller one, with the acne like a bad night in a Neapolitan pizza joint, reached over and snatched the mouse from my hand. “This thing’ll getya banned, fat-boy. You’ve been sending requests to people who don’t know you. We don’t like that, see? So knock it off or we’ll ban you.”

I couldn’t afford to be banned. I needed that fix. It was the biggest user of bandwidth on my tablet. I needed to be able to chat and snark 24×7. But they’d do it. Oh, yeah, like a homecoming queen protecting her corsage – only meaner.

Zits spoke again: “Sit down and log in.”

I shifted my gaze between the two of them. Hard looks all around. One of them was booting up my laptop. This was going to get ugly. I reached for the power cord to my DSL modem but a vice-like grip squeezed my fingers into a painful flesh pretzel. It was the nerdy one. “Don’t even think about it. Log in or else.”

I pulled up a fresh browser and logged in. “You might want to change that password. We don’t like it.”

My fingers hesitated like I’d touched an iron. I could feel the sizzle of a keylogger lurking in the keyboard. The account popped up and instead of my timeline there was a list of all the people I’d sent friend requests to that had never responded. I knew most of them. Or had served with them in the military and wanted to renew our friendship after all these decades. But that wasn’t going to be discussed. Instead the munchkin said, “You have a choice. Delete the requests and behave yourself or we’ll lock this down, put you in a trunk, and drop it in a sewer. Your choice, fats.”

That oily sweat on my bald head must have given me away. Zits reached over and started clicking the mouse on my behalf. He eliminated all but six of the requests. I had no idea who those six people even were. He was priming the pump for the next time – those half-a-dozen clowns were the first six rounds in his Facebook snubbie.

He smashed my hand with the mouse, breaking my little finger in the process. But he’d managed to move the enter key and submit my deletions. I heard the door slam and a voice call from the yard, “Don’t even think about what you see there. Just move on to the next item, it’s about a kitten making a wry comment. That pussy cat won’t get you banned.”

I looked at the screen. Sure enough, the second item was a cat playing with yarn and a Caturday caption.

It was the first item on the page that left me feeling like a gorilla had just hurled an American Tourister at my bread basket: Suggested Friends.

Just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in.