Facebook Follies (Updated!)

I joined Facebook this week. I’m not really the last holdout, but I'll bet I’m close. I actually did join a few years ago,  and to show you how serious I was about it, this was my profile photo*:

I signed on and immediately was swarmed, like a hive of angry murder hornets, with people who were clamoring to be my friend. I panicked, signed off and deleted my account. I batted away all entreaties to rejoin from friends until this week. I have an ulterior motive, of course. I'm writing a book, Tougher Than the Rest, a fictionalized version of my life, centered around the time leading up to my double lung transplant**

I wanted to promote the book, so I figured Facebook was the way to go. I signed on and quickly made a bunch of new friends and reacquainted myself with some old ones. Cool. 

I did post the first five pages of Tougher... and received some nice comments. On the advice of a friend, I tagged about nine friends to alert them to the post. Facebook quickly flagged that egregious behavior with "Your comment goes against our Community Standards so only you can see it."

Facebook asked ne if I disagreed with the decision and I said no, although I wished I could have said "Fuck no."

An hour or so later, my stepsister sent me a message saying she enjoyed the post, and ended with "Love you." I sent her a message that said, "Love you too," which was flagged with (see above).I disagreed with that, too.

My friend Carl saw a post recently that said, "I can't wait for Joe Biden to die,"  which did not violate community standards. Maybe I'll send a post that says, "I love Joe Biden," just to see what happens. 

I don't think I'm long for Facebook. 

Addendum: This racist, misogynist, incendiary, hateful, and overall dickish comment was flagged by Facebook. It was the answer to a nice message from a friend about my writing: 

* For you kids out there, that's the famous mugshot of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, not really me.

** If you regular readers of The Ego Has Landed are sick of hearing about the book, try to imagine how sick of talking about it I am.

Song of the Day: Roger Clyne was a member of the Refreshments, who were responsible for the theme to King of the Hill, the greatest TV theme of all time. This is from their album, Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy.

 

Bonus song! (How could I resist?)