I THOUGHT THAT ENTERING the world of Facebook might have been as exciting as my first spliff, taking me along an uncharted road where the present is ongoing and space-boundaries merge into eternity – and all that stuff. But in fact it was much more fun.
No sooner am I there than Simon wants to be my friend. It’s years since he came to stay, with his then unhappy partner who dramatically ripped up her diary in front of my gobsmacked sub-teen children. Needless to say, the relationship broke up soon afterwards. Now he makes batik and lives in India. We catch up on Facebook and discuss the Incredible String Band.
Facebook is terrific for reading about what other people are up to, including your own family. “Hey, Russ, [111 friends] you’ve gone quiet. Had to put in time working?” my son’s cousin [82 friends] writes on his wall, and like a mother hen I rush to his defence. “He’s looking after his three children while their mothers have a well-earned rest,” I Facebook the cousin privately while he, undeterred, goes public. “Been busy looking after the MFG” (main family group), he writes. Then there’s Ann (240 friends) who puts her brother in his place when he notices my presence on her wall. “Who’s this Mary Rusel” (sic) he asks. “She’s been a friend of our parents since forever and she lives in Ireland,” Ann tells him. Ann is 14 now, but we first bonded over her grandfather’s funeral when I sang Behan’s The Bells of Hell Go Dingalingaling from the pulpit – well, you never know when you’ll get the chance again – and she (then six) persuaded the funeral director to let her send her fairy wand to eternity on top of her grandfather’s coffin.
Having Facebook friends is a bit like counting how many cards you’ve been sent at Christmas: the more you have, the more popular you must be. I’m not very popular (33 friends and some of those are family) but look, what’s this? Tony Holden (1,495 friends) wants me to be his friend. Holden is both a poker and opera supremo who has written a book about supporting himself on his winnings at Las Vegas. Oh swoon. Make that 1,496 friends.
This morning, my eldest granddaughter, who lives in Antigua, talks to herself – and her 783 friends. “Why do people make assumptions about me?” she writes. “I look white but I act black. They can’t get that.” I reply to her privately, wittering on about tolerance of other people’s prejudices and then ruin it all by suggesting that if tolerance doesn’t work, she can always cut out their ovaries and stick them in their ears. I hit reply, forgetting to sign off with the obligatory LOL, OMG and WTF which may be why she doesn’t answer. That or she’s moved on. Facebooking is so totally now that delay your reply and your interlocutor will have gone away to make a one-second video.
Which brings us to tweeting. “First you’ll need a name,” says my daughter, who is a communications person extraordinaire and so extraordinary she doesn’t do Facebook. “I want to tweet anonymously so what about Solo Traveller?” I say, but she shakes her head: “Sounds as if you’re looking for a soul mate.” I offer Oak Tree, but that’s phallic. Nelson’s Pillar? Totally phallic.
In the end, I think up a name all by myself and start tweeting. But here there are no friends, just followers, so I decide to follow Ian McKellen, and you would too if you saw his Richard III. So that’s me and 20,652 other fans. Next, I follow a prolific Middle East journalist and we have a brief exchange about Syria that doesn’t go anywhere. What I desperately want is a follower. Just one. Maybe I need to tweet about sex to get one and I am trying to think up a brilliant 140-character tweet when Middle East journalist deviates from his usual political statements. “The people who shout ‘in the hole’ at golf tournaments,” he tweets, “must be a nightmare at funerals.” Before I can stop myself I tweet back, “and in the middle of sex”. However, as he doesn’t read my reply for some 30 tweets, he doesn’t know what I’m tweeting about. “Huh?” he asks.
Facebook – and some 35.8 per cent of people in Ireland use it – is fine for keeping in touch with family and friends, but like Twitter, much of it is time-wasting and often nothing more than a vehicle for commercial advertising. As is Foursquare, a smartphone app which uses its GPS to pinpoint a twitterer’s exact location and what they’re up to for the rest of the evening. Handy if you want to find a friend, and brilliant if you’re a burglar.
Róisín Ingle is away