Cancelled again

Goodbye again to MySpace, this time for good. I recognize and even respect a cultural phenomenon when I see one - COPS, track jackets, "I Brake for Pancakes" suction signs, the Geico lizard - and MySpace certainly is one of the greats. But I haven't cared for at least a year, and the fact that random solicitations and the all important "have you ever"-brand of bulletins are still out there waiting for me was just too much for my conscience. So now I don't have to worry about it.

To the next order of business: based on recent wife, in-law, and friends' conversation history, roughly eleventy-nine people will now cajole me into signing up for Facebook. The main argument "for" Facebook being, "It's sort of eerie - it will suggest friends for you based on your networks, and next thing you know you'll be catching up with Peter from pre-school." First of all, that dude was a narcissist - everything in the world was allegedly his (MINE!) - so why would I care what he's up to? Secondly, I think I do a good job of keeping up with the people I really care about via phone, text, email, blog, and occasionally bumping into them in my house.

Speaking of my house, we are SUCH a 21st Century family. I caught us the other night in the following scenario: Annie was participating in online training on her company laptop, I was on the couch building a new product spreadsheet from my company laptop, Zoey was playing the interactive Littlest Pet Shop game on the Mac, and Preston was downstairs playing Tony Hawk Underground 2 on the PS2. We have up to 4 laptops in the house, a Dell PC, 5 active TVs (3 of them flat screen HD-capable), a Wii, a PS2, an unused PlayStation, all 4 of us have active iPods (plus 2 unused older models), the kids have GameBoys and Nintendo DSs, and we recently obtained four 007-style secret video watches with global GPS and 8-language instant translators! (I made that last one up.) Sometimes, we try and get away from it all by eating dinner together on our holographic, hovering dinner table.

Here's my deal with Facebook: I'm trying to blog more, and I'm pondering if I want to build readership for one of those blogs, and wondering why I would want to do that with the ridiculous amount of material that's out there. It would take more time and mental capacity than I'm currently giving. And I don't know that I want to open a window into the lives of long-gone friends, acquaintances, teammates, classmates, or neighbors. If my wife's recent participation is any indication, catching up with all of them (even if silently, like a virtual voyeur) would take up a lot of that time. Or maybe I don't want to open my own window for all of them. My partial anonymity in this blogosphere is comforting.

What I do know is I'm a sucker for attention and self promotion. Maybe, just maybe, if I receive a flood of comments on this post calling for my entry into the Facebook realm, I might see you there someday soon. For now, I'm going to stop typing and thinking and chuckling at my own jokes and join my wife on the couch to watch some Intervention on A&E. I just thought of a new slogan for that show: "Less depressing than actual addiction, yet half the fun!"