Too much time on Facebook
Is reminding me how many morons are out there. I have had to use “Block” so many times it’s not funny, and I like “Block”
it has also made me go back to comfortable, enjoyable things; I have gone back to reading wells and pratchett and Le Carre and Michael Connely, because they let me escape from stupidworld into places I think are a little less stupid.
Granted, pratchett’s politics are stunningly ignorant, and Wells was a dreamer with little knowledge of science, and most of the other people I enjoy are just nuts, but they are nuts in a predictable way.
So I haven’t read as much new stuff as I ought, and my reading list is always long, but I have been enjoying this antidote to the ignorance of humanity. It keeps me away from the knives, so that’s good.
Give Nathan Lowell’s Solar Clipper books a try, the first one is titled Quarter Share. They’re about a young man who, after the untimely demise of his mother, takes a job as a deckhand on an interstellar cargo vessel to avoid deportation and an uncertain, indebted future.
I call them “Blockbait”, my block list is longer than my friends list…
I have taken to ‘Deactivating’ my Facebook account for a day or two at a time, as sabbatical from the mundane, and soul sucking drama.
If it was not for family. book of face would be history. On second thought maybe is should take a short walk anyway.
The stupid is running high of late.
I only started a blocked list when a couple of people who I’ve shut out of my life forever decided it was a cool idea to up and message me, hey buddy how you’ve been, it’s been a long time, etc. Other than that I’ll defriend someone I didn’t want to be rude toward at a reunion or grocery store encounter after years of just not being in the loop, when they insist we friend up and be chatty Patties on the spot and do the deed on these confounded smart phones right there. I have no animosity towards them, I just don’t know them anymore and for a chance seating chart in school 30 years ago we’re otherwise strangers. I try to keep my list of friends those who I actually keep up with in real life, so it’s < 100.
But holy gee whiz am I on a number of other people's banned list. And it's all politics. If I don't have the rainbow flag superimposed over my portrait, I'm the epitome of evil. If I don't rail long into the night against the RFRA supporters, I'm ban worthy. One lady from church of all places had a pic of two guys in tuxes kissing and said if we (the friends on the wall) didn't think this was the most beautiful picture ever, we'd be defriended. I didn't press "like," so out I went into the trash.
I'm supposed to be closed minded one and I have a catholic (small c for universal) collection of nuts from far left to far right in my posse. It's the open minded so called more intelligent and sophisticated ones who want the echo chamber of total agreement. I want to keep reading them to know where they stand so I know who to bar the door from when the Ball Drops. Keep your friends close and frenemies closer, so to speak.
If it wasn't for the fact that I wouldn't know when a single family or friend function or activity was occurring, I would be off the FB. It's the only reason I stay. "Are you mad at us? No, why? You didn't come to our son's birthday party or the farewell to cousin N? I didn't know about those. Well, we posted the event on FB! I suspended my account. Well, you need to get back on. Why can't you e-mail or call me? Because everything is done on FB."