My introduction to Facebook... left me in tears. If the `Trying Facebook' entry came out seeming angry rather than sorrowful, then I should probably apologise to anyone who read it. When I went to bed, that night, I wanted to cry. My wife asked me why I'd come to bed so late, I said "Because I'm depressed". "This whole Facebook thing has just got me really upset", I said. She said, "Then delete your account--it's OK, you don't have to use it." I told her, "It's not Facebook per se--it's that it seems like my friends are telling me that they basically don't want to be bothered corresponding with me unless I can solve all of these puzzles. That's what's bothering me." When I awoke the next morning, I wanted to cry. We were going to go visit Pam's sister and her family, so I made myself a `healing mix' on my iPod.
There were more, but I was back in perfect health by #16. #4 is where I broke down, and where I began rebuilding. Several of the pieces listed above are ones that I find profoundly moving (Canon, in particular, always makes be cry--it's just that beautiful). Listening to them--experiencing them all in series like that provided a sensation of... liberation, hard to describe. Maybe it's like flying--soaring. It's like..., I don't know--it's like being loved. In some way, being immersed in beauteous music is (perhaps) the same sort of experience as the `pure light' experience that the doctor described in `Sunshine'. [Reply] |
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Actually, all of the geekspace.com services are down--it looks like the server has gone offline. If you're wondering why I haven't responded to your e-mail, this is your answer--I haven't received your e-mail, if it was sent within the last few days. If you want to contact me, you can e-mail me at this domain instead of geekspace.com, or you can send me a message on AIM. Or you can reach me by telephone. Or you can send me a hand-written letter. Or a typewritten letter, if you have tragically-messy handwriting. [Reply] |
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OK, I'm on Facebook, now. Now that I've tried it, I feel like it's.... several hours of my life that I'm never going to get back--time that I could have spent painting, writing poetry, practicing my theremin, learning Hebrew, releasing libvisualid 0.2, playing Munchkin or weiqi or any game that's fun with someone. I created yet another incompatible, exclusive account with yet another password to remember, jumped through the series of captchas, spent an hour figuring out how to get Facebook to import the RSS feed from the journal that I already own (and that everyone supposedly wants to read `but only on Facebook'--is my site really that ugly? You can just tell me so, if it is...), and spent even longer rummaging around in the rest of the Facebook UI to try to figure out what I was looking at at any given moment and how I was supposed to get back to the listing of information that I wanted. That latter bit... I still haven't figured out; I'm also having trouble figuring out what the differences between `notes', `messages', `posts'(?) and whatever are, which ones I have to use in which contexts, how I even get to the page for each of them.... At the end of my first day as a Facebook user, it really does seem like the correct response to "... but Facebook is FREE!" is "only if my time isn't worth anything". But my time is worth something--and yours is, too! I'd much rather spend what little time I have actually enjoying your company than waste it fighting my way through what looks like it's just a neverending shithole of UI cruft. Seriously--come to dinner! Have an actual conversation! Be an actual real-life friend! I'll be yours! I'll cook! I'll serve you my best wine! I'll laugh at your jokes! I'll BRING PIE! Or tell me `I'm not going to care about you unless you can pass the Facebook gauntlet', which seems all too much a long-winded version of `fuck you'. [Reply] | |||
OK, I'm on Facebook, now. Now that I've tried it, I feel like it's.... several hours of my life that I'm never going to get back--time that I could have spent painting, writing poetry, practicing my theremin, learning Hebrew, releasing libvisualid 0.2, playing Munchkin or weiqi or any game that's fun with someone. I created yet another incompatible, exclusive account with yet another password to remember, jumped through the series of captchas, spent an hour figuring out how to get Facebook to import the RSS feed from the journal that I already own (and that everyone supposedly wants to read `but only on Facebook'--is my site really that ugly? You can just tell me so, if it is...), and spent even longer rummaging around in the rest of the Facebook UI to try to figure out what I was looking at at any given moment and how I was supposed to get back to the listing of information that I wanted. That latter bit... I still haven't figured out; I'm also having trouble figuring out what the differences between `notes', `messages', `posts'(?) and whatever are, which ones I have to use in which contexts, how I even get to the page for each of them.... At the end of my first day as a Facebook user, it really does seem like the correct response to "... but Facebook is FREE!" is "only if my time isn't worth anything". But my time is worth something--and yours is, too! I'd much rather spend what little time I have actually enjoying your company than waste it fighting my way through what looks like it's just a neverending shithole of UI cruft. Seriously--come to dinner! Have an actual conversation! Be an actual real-life friend! I'll be yours! I'll cook! I'll serve you my best wine! I'll laugh at your jokes! I'll BRING PIE! Or tell me `I'm not going to care about you unless you can pass the Facebook gauntlet', which seems all too much a long-winded version of `fuck you'. [Reply] |
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