One of these days Nate Silver, because he is a more accurate than average pollster, is going to predict victory for somebody we liberals don’t like, because elections are like that, you don’t win them all, and then we will turn on him quicker than relatives who’ve been left out of the will. Until that day comes, however, I’m still a fan of Nate Silver and highly recommend his site.
On to tonight’s column:
Very often, when people are complaining about the shallowness of facebook, they will say “I don’t care if you just had a poop,” or “I don’t care what you had for dinner,” and generally I agree, although I make some exceptions. I don’t at all mind hearing about somebody’s dinner if it was something special and exotic, if it was a major event, or if they include a recipe.
To be contrarian, though, I would say that these are reasons that facebook conversations are better than real, live conversations. If you are out at a pub with friends or visiting somebody in their home, and they start talking about their bowel movements, you are trapped.
But, on facebook you can just pay them no never mind and scan merrily down the page.
Same with food. As I said, I make exceptions in this category but in real life you may well find yourself, through no moral failing of your own, caught in a debate over the relative merits of Pepsi and Coke, or a debate about which food is spicier, Mexican or Thai.
On facebook, you can just keep moving. It’s like a conversation in a crowded pub. Lots of different people are talking about lots of different things. But on facebook, it’s never awkward to extricate yourself from a conversation and move to a different circle, where the people maybe aren’t such pop-culture parrots, and you can actually get into a stimulating conversation, the kind where you might learn something.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m very sociable. I like people. I just don’t always like talking to them.
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