Repost, reschmost.

In the writing game, you occasionally you get e-mails like these:

Dear Fred: Why aren't you on Facebook? We fans could keep up with your stupid life much more easily if you were on FB. You could write about your problems with work, and the dog, and every thing else no one cares about. So get on FB! P.S: Your books suck butt too.
Love, I. P. Daley

Well, Ms. Daley, you sure make it sound tempting! I have been on Facebook in the past, though, and found the experience less than rewarding. It seems like a forum in which high-strung people who cannot tolerate being jabbed like to run around poking people. Didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me.

But I think the thing that frustrated me the most were serial posts like these:

MY DAD'S THE BEST! REPOST IF YOUR DAD'S THE BEST! 

Kind of diminishes the award, doesn't it?

A BILLION BRONTOSAURUSES DIE EVERY DAY BECAUSE NO ONE CARES ENOUGH TO REPOST THIS

Sorry.

WRITE "AMEN" IF YOU SUPPORT THE RIGHTS OF DUMB PEOPLE

I'm too dumb to spell anem.

See what I mean? It's like people are always telling me to do things and if I don't do them I'm a bad person. In the early days of e-mail I used to get demands like that once in a while, with exhortations about the wonderful things that would happen if I spread this blessing to seven friends or the horrible curses that would befall me if I broke the chain. I never got that many chain e-mails, and I was happy to ignore them. But Facebook's news feed is like an endless list of chain e-mails, alternating with needy trolling for likes. It makes even the least demanding of my friends and acquaintances look like a wheedling salesman with low self-esteem.

So that's why you won't find Fred on Facebook. I haven't ruled out Twitter, but as you can see, I'm not capable of complaining in short form.