h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*wonders if Rod's comment is referring to the post directly above it or the one about kittens*

Petty hate - but only possibly.

The feeling that I might be missing out with face book.

I really don't get it. Really. I have a profile because friends who I see in the real world said that I ought to 'get on facebook'. I watched a load of inane billhooks going on for a while and never bothered to go back. Then I went down the pub.

My status probably says that I am still there.

What is it for I asked. For keeping in touch they said. ? In the real world I have a phone and e-mail and don't understand why people are throwing sheep at me or trying to turn me into a zombie.

I am going down the pub about 9 where there are some real people and a band. Coming?

PP

*wonders if Rod's comment is referring to the post directly above it or the one about kittens*

I'll leave you to an hour's contemplation of that problem, TC.

signed:
not the kitten

PH: coming off the back of the above comment RE Facebook... having to maintain friendships via it. I'm a part time student at the moment, I've never had to do anything like this and it is ridiculous. It's not even a sodding friendship, dammit.

The tedious argument that internet friends aren't "real people" - h2g2 should know better than that!

You mean...you're *real*, Mal?

Oh - PH: people making all manner of strange assumptions on the basis of one's nationality. Especially when the nation in question is so close the ignorance is inexcusable.

I'm as real as that ancient and noble knight, Sir Real...

So that's why your hats don't fit!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3yidX0zYbZs/TOAr5hU6RTI/AAAAAAAADAE/Kb5o4vykY6A/s1600/Sleep_-_Le_Sommeil_Salvador_Dali.jpg

Unfortunate terminology maybe: you could see them as connexions rather than friends. Really they're whatever you want them to be, no matter what FB calls them.

PH: typing "firends" instead of "friends" all the time.

The most recent person wanting to "friend" me on facebook was a girl I did a project with at Uni - until she talked to the professor two weeks before it was due and decided she would continue our project (that we'd been working on all semester) alone, and I could just start a new one...

She failed the exam with our joint design because she didn't understand how the cantilevered system I designed stayed up. I passed with my hastily-drawn new one.

But I still have no desire to be friends with her, so it's odd that she should try now

(And even seeing her face is still a PH! )

That's one of the reasons I'm not fussed about joining Facebook. There are some people I'm just glad I've seen the back of.

I feel I have to stand up for Facebook here, as a fan.

It's a great way of communicating immediately with a lot of your friends, in a way that you couldn't down the pub, or by phone or email. Having used it for an urgent request for help last year, there isn't another form of communication that could have done the job.

But yeah, there's a lot of sheep throwing and poking as well. Though it's relatively easy to ignore.

PH: people who start putting away their gym equipment while the rest of the class is diligently stretching. And then don't even fold their step away properly, leaving a precarious tower!

Oh, yeah. I'm not gratuitously running it down - it has its uses. I've just never really had much call to sign up to use them, personally. It's not that I wouldn't on principle, or anything.

Mala, they are. It's just it doesn’t really feel like a friendship of any sort at the moment, if you know what I mean. I'm 80 miles away most of the time for god's sake.

PH: The way Facebook keeps suggesting I connect with people I either do not know or have seen the back for whatever reason... why should I want to let you what I'm doing, where, how and with who if you screwed me over 6 years ago, talked crap behind my back, and you're a bit of a stalker to boot? Er, no.

Have to admit, I’m trying to stay away from it. S'like blogging. I only do so when I think it's worth saying. Sometimes that doesn't get followed but still...

PH: Celebrity endorsements on products they've probably never even seen. There's a 'James Martin' seed grinder and a 'Jamie Oliver' blueberry bush. I bet Jamie didn't get involved in the slightest with that bush, other than taking a wodge of cash for them using his image. So if we bought it, we are paying simply to see his grinning face on the plantpot. It's insulting!

I'm still bugged by the use of "Your" to try and market stuff to us so that we feel we own it.

"Your Tesco Express" ... "Your M&S" ... yeah right if it's mine, give me my stuff for free ...

Ahhh ... and just after I post that ... receive the water bill from "Your water company" ...

You'll be even more bugged when they start using "you're" for the same purpose: "You're Tesco Express", "you're M&S"...