George Parker: Social Networking… Seven Degrees of Separation from Reality?

Living out in the wilds of Idaho, I have to wait ‘till mid-day to get my hard copy fix of the New York Times… Yeah, I know I can get most of it online hours before, and I usually do. But shit, that’s not the same as spilling your breakfast beer over the print edition and making the ink soak into the tablecloth, so your wife can give you a huge bollocking to start her day on a high note… Anyway, I digress. I look forward to the Sunday edition. Yes, it is boat anchor sized. But also, it has lots of my favorite columnists in it – like Frank Rich, not merely because, like me, he’s a left wing, cheese eating, surrender monkey, but because he can get you thinking in unexpected directions. In Rich’s Sunday column, he said, “One of the most persistent cultural tics of the early 21st century is Americans’ reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news. We are plugged into more information sources than anyone could have imagined even 15 years ago. The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly “changed everything,” slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable. Obama’s toughest political problem may not be coping with the increasingly marginalized G.O.P. but with an America-in-denial that must hear warning signs repeatedly, for months and sometimes years, before believing the wolf is actually at the door.”

I found this particularly interesting because just a few weeks ago, I was in Britain when they announced their financial “bail out” package. The media coverage described how Britain’s tax payers would have to suffer the consequences in the next couple of years. Here in the US, when talking about our bail out package, commentators describe how our children and grandchildren will pay for our follies in future generations. In other words, all that unpleasant shit can be put off until we are dead. Ergo, we don’t have to consider the consequences today; leave it to the fucktard kids a few years down the road.

I think this is one of the great attractions of social networking. Most of these sites concern themselves with the most puerile trivia. They have become places where you can cocoon yourself in warm, fuzzy, even sticky virtual bodies (if that’s what turns you on!) You can connect to people you hardly knew existed… The problem is… These weirdos can also connect to you. I am growing sick and tired of people asking if they can connect to me. Why, I ask? What is the benefit of being connected to someone I never knew existed five minutes ago? When you get these invites from Facebook, LinkedIn, and other, ever proliferating brain-dead sites, you check out the inviter’s profile to make sure they don’t play with chainsaws and watch “Saw” ‘till their eyeballs bleed. Then you find they have ten thousand fucking connections/friends/douchenozzles, or whatever. And you have to wonder to yourself, no matter how many times you do the Kevin Bacon seven degrees of separation connection exercise, no one has close to fifty REAL friends. (Even though in the case of Kevin Bacon, that will unfortunately include Bernie Madoff.)

So, for Gods sake get a life. Just make sure it’s not a Second one.

George Parker is a guest columnist for psfk.com. He the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, which is without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. He is the author of MadScam and his next book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, which you can order now on Amazon. He will be promoting the crap out of it in coming weeks. Pour yourself, etc, etc.