Social Networking, Not Working

Claire is leaving Facebook. So the message went. My response: who's Claire? Claire it turns out, is my friend, or was before she left facebook. I had forgotten about Claire. She had been lost in the quagmire of my other 300 odd facebook 'friends', which is by most standards a conservative number. Now she would be truly lost to the real world. Or is that found?

Veda updated her status to tell us that if we were reading this we had just survived her latest 'cull'. I crossed my legs anxiously. Darren rang me angry that I had not come to his party the night before. Did I know about it? 'I invited you on Facebook!' he said. I had some explaining to do.

I dragged myself away from the monitor and into the bathroom, where I took a good long look in the mildewed mirror. Something was rotten in the state of Bookmark(s). I had friends called Claire, I didn't know about, and friends called Veda who were weilding cyber machetes, warning us we were next, and implying we should be grateful for her mercy. I rang Darren back, 'I stopped responding to events about a year ago, there are simply too many invites. I don't need to go watch the pseudo-physical theatre version of The Frogs on at the Rosemary Branch, that this girl I could have met once, whose friend I may have slept with once (she says we did - I say we didn't), with these people who keep popping up as Recommended Friends. I live in London. I don't have time to see my 'real' friends'. When did Facebook become a substitute for living, rather than an accessory of it? Social Networking is making me less Social and it is Notworking for me.

Twitter, for me, represents the fundamental problem with much of today's disconnect. It is all output. No input. Everybody pretends to read. But mostly, we want to pretend we're being read. It's been called democratic. I call it 'blah'. Demi more and Achtung Kushner (whatever he's called) - and in this country Stephen Fry- are the high priests and priestesses, with that little blue bird emblazoned on their chalice. At every 'celebrity' death or natural disaster, increasingly lazy news researchers at Bloomberg go to Demi for her council. 'Too Bad' she tweets, 'LOL'. What a moron.

I think of Claire. She sounds brave. It's true that she will no longer be invited to parties, and miss the ongoing epic of Susan's singe-married-it's complicated-divorced status to Frank. But at least she isn't proud of her virtual diarrhea masquerading as opinion. She's probably out in the real world, meeting a real friend, and having a real good time. She doesn't need to be reminded of this on facebook, or to let any of us know about it. Maybe I should have gotten to know her, out there? Maybe there's still time?