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When I was four, I used to commission fact sheets from my dad requesting details such as hair colour, favourite food &c. My predilections and vital statistics were exciting, squeaky-new discoveries – and in later years, new bands and hair colours are wan substitutes. But it’s still fun for ages 9-99. If you're important enough, the Guardian supplements may one day ask you 20 questions, and you will answer them all with "Waking up next to my wife". However, us lesser mortals must sate our lust for immortality with online networking profiles.

Why?

Do we list your likes to try and even out the balance, when our life is so riddled with dislikes? What the French call "Metro - boulot - dodo"? You don't like showing your naked sleepyface on THE BUS every morning. You feel trapped in an unrewarding JOB, where true personality fears to tread. You lie awake at night reliving FIST BITING MEMORIES from your past. Nobody else remembers those moments, but that's no comfort, so it's important to count your blessings.

Is that what the facebook format is for? Taking your tie off and smelling the flowers? Or is it a mating ritual? I once filled in an "OKCupid" profile, and my matches - the people of similar morals who enjoyed the same books and videos as me - were not people who lent tumescence to my winkie (all turned me off either by liking Terry Pratchett or by being my brother). In the middle class UK branch of Facebook all the boys look like lab assistants, and all the girls look like Louise Brookes dressed as Minnie Mouse, and they all talk like effete uncles and tomboy aunties, and they all like Scrubs, Sufjan Stevens and Catch 22. What's to know? Vive la difference, add salt to my meat.

Is this a book you like - or a book you'd like to like? Is this film a foul-weather friend or a PR? Show yourself by listing your enemy films. Which do you dislike liking? Which of your dislikes do you like? Do you like to dislike? People list their favourite bands and authors - and emphasise that the list is incomplete. But of course! Who but an autist has finite tastes? Panic not, your omissions do not mislead me.

Give me a social networking system built openly on fear and loathing. Or a confessional. Show in your contact list a gallery of those to whom you owe forgiveness. A network of people you have dirt on - parochial kiss 'n' tells. Testify your pain and resentment. Confess and absolve. When people you don't like try to “friend” you, give negative testimony. "Your posturing sickens me". "The memory of our drunken sexual encounter is like knives to a blackboard". "I genuinely hate you just because you have nicer hair than me". I want to make "2facebook".

No, here's one. Assimilate the current popularity of genealogy and make familybook. If immortality is the attraction, let's do it properly. The Koreans think that we are squeamish about their dog farms because we have weak family values, and can only open our hearts and souls to capering, sycophantic mutes. Can you list 10 of your mum's favourite bands? Do you know what your grandad's first job was? After all, it's part of what made you who you are - the butterfly effect of your great-aunt's time in the ball bearing factories led to your love of Deerhoof, you know. The time for finding out your friends’ favourite telly shows is when you’re in the old folks’ home together. Imagine a WW2 facebook: Interests: Gardening, Oxo, NOT getting fucked or bombed. Back in the days before boredom. The only facebook they had was Schindler’s List.

Show me elliptical vignettes - blogs and flickrs - and send your meticulous personality meta tags to Tesco. Facebook’s supposed to be a friendfinder but it looks more like a factfest, like a pile of tellies.

I shouldn't scorn something that wasn't made for me. Just because I don't want to do it doesn't mean it shouldn't be there - that's homogenophobic. Plus I visit it every day. Is my ambivalence fired because it makes me feel competitive? Did I hypocritically turn up wanting to be discovered in the most nonchalant chair?

In my college's "alternative" yearbook I put "The Moon" as my future destination, with forced leftfieldery - and so did the trenchcoat boy who I bullied in film class.

If I list my favourite sandwiches on Facebook I know I'll feel compelled to add "And more..." because I don't want to be judged on incomplete evidence.

Have them carve "I could have gone on..." on my gravestone.

Posted by rosy at juillet 30, 2007 05:31 PM | TrackBack