My kids are not on Facebook, but my wife is. So finally I decided to get on to the social media platform that is attracting more mature people.
I have a confession to make here: I had logged in to Facebook a couple of years ago, but I tried to do it anonymously. I had signed in with a fake name that I thought sounded hip and posted a silly message on ‘the wall’ and waited. (Yes, the ‘Timeline’ was called ‘The Wall’, in those days).
Nothing happened, so I started to “poke” (‘nudge’, in Facebookspeak) people, trying to attract attention. Again, nothing happened. So, I pottered around the Marketplace and checked out the Events and read about the junk people were selling and the parties I had not been invited to.
I didn’t realise at that time that you can’t make friends without putting up your picture and listing your real name and your location.
My Facebook profile picture at that time was an egg. The egg was pale white and it stood on its base, strangely without toppling over. If some people had come across my profile, I don’t think they would have been too enamoured to chat with an egg. I then gave up on Facebook.
I am actually not very good at socialising, or at least that’s what my wife says.
Give me a nice book, a hot cup of herbal tea and a comfortable sofa or chair and I am happy. Seeing how happy I am with myself, my wife got me a Gary Kasparov computerised chessboard (Yes, this was in the age before free game downloads from the App store) and I would spend hours on it late into the night trying to beat the Grandmaster.
I then realised that chess players may be brainy and all that, but they all seem to be absolute bonkers.
So, I gave that up and over the years moved on to other social media such as Twitter where I could happily talk to myself, laugh at my jokes and say, “haha”. The strange thing is that I have followers. Maybe they like the way I laugh or something.
Encouraged by this, I went back to Facebook, thinking that I now know how to make friends in the virtual world. I tried changing the fake name and typing in my real name, but Facebook would not allow that.
I tried changing my birthday to pretend that I was much younger than my years since I did not want to be trapped in groups such as “Gastro Support Group” or “Eat Prunes Group”, but Facebook would not allow that either.
I asked my friend what I should do and she said that I should just scrap this account and start another one. But I didn’t want to do that as I had grown fond of my account and it had sentimental value.
So I befriended some of my friends online and then sent them SMS, telling them not to get alarmed as it was just me, not some crazy Facebook predator. A good friend refused my friendship and said he has had enough of me throughout the day at work and chatting with me again later in the night on Facebook would drive him crazy.
I am happy to say that I am now addicted to Facebook. I even got the Facebook app on my old Blackberry that barely has space. I had to delete all my music and photos to make way for this app.
I now log in to Facebook late at night and I have three windows open, just like the financial editors in our office, with three screens in front of them, and I switch between the various social media networks.
But my wife now says we need to get out and socialise more.
