Social Suicide (or: On Being Yourself)

Over a course of a day or two-three, I posted the following bits on Facebook, my favorite enemy. Although no one actually unfriended me so far, the reactions it evoked (apart from a few friendly and intelligent responses) ranged from pure aloofness to primitive animosity. And these were just some innocent jokes. Imagine...

– Impossible love: he is a convinced atheist and naïve romantic, she is the personification of level-headedness.

– He fathomed his own emotional state like master perfumers analyze scents. ‘I feel cold, anxious, aggressive, ambitious, nervous, sexual, stoic, provocative, whimsical and omnipotent in a ratio of 13: 14: 32:2.5: 7: 11: 50: 17: 65: 2.’

– In books, I like to read about people for whom life is hell* – not about young, successful and happy people with white shiny teeth whose biggest problem is Which Shoes for Which Party. I transfer this interest in books in my interest in facebook I’m sorry to say.

*How the main character, aided by a big balloon, flies to the top of the trees where the bees have hidden their batch of honey… How a man’s self-image of being a Noble Knight is getting his arse kicked in every chapter… How a person can kill one little unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash with an axe and he never hears the end of it… How you can be somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs begin to take hold…

– The advantage of having Other People around you is that you get to know yourself. The disadvantage is that you stop being yourself.

–  ”The only thing I ever received from my employer on time was the letter telling me I was fired.” How about that for an opening line for a novel?

–  T-shirt: “I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.”

–  According to the Washington Post, the average Facebook user has 245 friends, but the average friend on Facebook has 359 friends. How about that! However, leaving this mind-blowing paradox aside... I have exactly 20 friends. What surprises me is not that I have this few. I'm surprised I have this many!

–  Writing is just a continuation of silence by other means.

–  My psychiatrist wants me to be a braindead, cold-hearted selfish hypocrite parasite. Those weren’t his exact words of course, but this was the gist of it. I’m willing to try anything to earn a respected place in society.

–  Someone informed me that I should ‘stop posting grumpy things at Facebook’. Grumpy? Is that how this all comes across to you guys? I thought I was cracking killer jokes here… but perhaps this explains the deafening silence then. However, the customer is always right… no more grumpyness it is. [followed by a photograph picked from the internet of a street sign saying “Bacon is the answer”]

–  Are you talking to me?