Saving face on Facebook

The Facebook nightmare continues. It's listing more and more people as friends. One or two genuine friends are asking me if I was getting desperate or something. I mean I like people generally. I'll chat with anyone... unless I'm feeling anti-social when the fishing comes in handy. Mostly I talk to the dog but he's not on Facebook - Dogbook maybe.

I wonder what a Dogbook entry would look like? On the Dogbook wall there would be multiple comments saying "Woof", "Arf", and an occasional "Grrrr." They'd send each other peemails. Well they do that already. Our dog isn't happy unless he's checked all his peemails every day.

I digressed. It's not the "friends" who are listed on Facebook that worries me: it's me. I mean how many people have been looking down their emails only to find one from Richard Donkin asking them to be his friend simply because they once sent him an email? How sad is that?

But you can't undo what's done. You can't send messages to people saying: "Sorry but we both know we're not really friends so lets call it off." Besides some of my Facebook friends, well quite a lot of them in fact, are really very attractive. With friends like these.... no, really, sending out that message was an accident. Honest!

Not all the friends are very friendly. One of them is a PR guy with a grudge. There must be plenty of them out there, all wondering why I suddenly want to be their friend.

So why did you do it Donkin, you may ask? I don't recall doing anything. I just had an email and felt curious. Maybe I clicked something. It's like a web-based Pandora's Box. Once started, this thing just balloons. I'm wondering if I can turn it into a column somehow. There has to be a recruitment angle here.

Ah! Have just found another old fart. My old FT mucker and well known technophobe Jimmy Burns has joined and he's older than me.