The Guardian has a cracking guide to MySpace, FaceBook etc etc today

This is the best bit. I am so glad that I am not alone.

"I don't need long-lost m@tes

The day before the latest manifestation of our heir to the throne's premature mid-life crisis, a 32-year-old friend emailed me. "Have you joined Facebook yet?" he asked. Prince William allegedly signing up to a social-networking website so he can converse with his toff pals is about what you'd expect from him. But my mate has a busy job and a vibrant social life.
"No, I have not joined Facebook yet," I (nearly) replied, "because I am no longer an adolescent, my development has not been arrested, I don't need long-lost m@tes from nursery school, I don't want to join the Drunken Text Message Appreciation Society, I don't have time to check my 'newsfeed' for vital titbits such as 'William Wales updated his profile. He is now looking for whatever he can get (3.56am)' and I certainly don't fancy spending out-of-work hours 'relaxing' behind another computer screen."

"You just don't get social networking, do you?" sighs another thirtysomething Facebook friend.
Incase uz didn no, I do. Like most "ppl" I'm socially networking every minute I'm awake, using newfangled contraptions (email, text message, carrier pigeon) to arrange and enhance real face time. I don't need Facebook time.

Facebook, MySpace and Bebo are just about acceptable if you're too young to enter a pub. If you're not, and want to do the online equivalent of hanging outside the school gates, go ahead. But they'll be sniggering at you. "My sister's a teacher and she said her pupils who are all on it thought it was hilarious that I should be on it at my age," admits a 31-year-old Facebook addict.

Online oldsters: the internet is robbing you of real life. If you're single, every second spent perusing other people's photos on Facebook is a second less to catch the eye of a gorgeous passerby in the street. If your mind-numbing job plonks you behind a computer all day, every minute spent on Facebook is a minute lost to do something about your stultifying situation. And every sensory-deprived hour spent social networking online is an hour less to savour the thrilling marvel of the living, breathing, pulsating real world."

Posted By: Old Git on May 16th 2007 at 11:12:41

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