Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

You know what I hate? Of course you do, if you read this blog. But you know what I’m gonna articulate my hatred of?

Facebook.

There is nothing good about it. For example:

- For a long time, I had a fake name on my facebook profile: Ferdinand Maximillian Branganza-Hohenzollern. At least three times, a stranger either tried to befriend me to ask if that was my real name, or accuse me of having made it up. These people thought it was their business.

- Because the Hohenzollerns ruled Prussia and later the German Empire, and the Branganzas ruled Portugal, two extremely minor royals friended me, “because we were family.” So I got see a lot of drunk college pictures of Leka II, Crown Prince (in pretence) of Albania, and some random anglicized Habsburg cadet who lives in Miami and is a TV commercial actor. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

- You know how sometimes, you’ll be making out with a guy at a party, and some girl we went to high schol with several years ago will interrupt you to talk about something boring? And you know how she’ll later figure out, somehow, your fake facebook name and friend you, twice, based on the fact that she annoyed you briefly at a party some months ago? What kind of mind thinks that “relationship” should be preserved?

- “Here is the top music in the Tulane network:
1. Jack Johnson
2. James Blunt
3. Pussycat Dolls
4. High School Musical 2 Soundtrack
5. A broken white noise machine that emits a piercing whistle”
Why should I want to know this? Information like this depresses me.

- There are people dumb enough to give Facebook their credit card details, so that they can pay Facebook to put a small picture of a Pina Colada on someone else’s page.

- “You have been invited to become a unicorn mermaid ballerina princess ninja zombie vampire pirate mummy football hooligan eel!” If I wanted to pretend to be a mythical creature, I’d change my name to MistWolf NightRunner and hang out in my mom’s houing project playing D&D with the developmentally disabled. But I don’t, so I won’t, okay?

- Even I think it’s sketchy when people try to get laid from Facebook. However, I find it much more disturbing when people try to make friend on Facebook. And I find it incredibly disturbing when a stranger friends you, “pokes” you a lot, and then drunkenly declares love. Also alarming is the idea that Facebook interaction constitutes a valid relationship, to wit: This guy pulled the “I’ll call you, really, but I’m not gonna” thing, which is fine. It happens. I have done it. But then let’s leave it at that. Let’s not pull a snub in real life but then “poke” someone on Facebook and invite him to lame-ass groups about how you wish you were a viscount.

- Just because we went to the same high school doesn’t mean I care if you live or die. People I never once hung out with in high school would friend me, and I didn’t understand that. There was nothing to preserve or maintain, but because they remembered me, kind of, we were friends?

- No one should be allowed to say what their politics or religious views are in an open space, because they will say dumb shit.

- Ditto sexuality.

- Ditto favorite music, favorite quotes, favorite food, favorite movies, goals, aspirations, fears and joys.

In short, Facebook eventually became a near occasion of sin. I knew, if I looked at it, that it would just turn into a Two Minutes’ Hate, so I got rid of it. What pissed me off is that I couldn’t just do it; there were people I actually liked that I only had touch with through facebook, so I had to nag them to give me their real emails before I could erase it. And erase it I did, to bask in the glow of never, ever again having to read that “Jessalyn Katzenberg is EEEEE!!!! soexxxited 2 b going home.”