My Friends Have Arrived
Hordes of them. But who are they?
In the past week, I’ve gained 2,000+ friends on Facebook. To put that into perspective, two weeks ago I had, I think, thirty-five friends on Facebook.
Now, I have 962 friend requests waiting for me, and I see that I have 1,427 people following me. I don’t use Facebook very much, never have, so all of this is surprising, alarming and … interesting. I discussed it with a friend who knows a bit more than I do about cyber-security (one of the thirty-five), and … we’re not shutting it down just yet.
The sense of a connection
It all began with a senior moment/serendipitous moment (kind of both), as told in my previous story here (which I shared with the thirty-five). Since then, I’ve spoken to friends and old colleagues (some not publicly online), re-learned the meaning of the word “catfish”, and (partly on the advice of those friends) failed to pick up a grand total of 72 voice calls from names I don’t recognise.
I would like to think that some of these people are real. I enjoy the sense of connection. I get messages that are kind, and interested, and friendly (I get other messages too), and I would like to believe in them. Yes, I do consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent adult, and no, thank you, I am not looking for an investment opportunity that will double my money overnight. I’m sure it is hard to sell beachfront apartments in Wyoming, but I’m not taking one off your hands even at that price.
I don’t reply to any of those messages (advice, friends), even the kind ones, but I do sometimes respond briefly to the comments beneath my posts. I’m posting a lot on Facebook at the moment, for various reasons. There are good people out there (and others), and I’m glad to have become aware of them.
Enemies of the superstate
I shall remain connected to my new friends for now. I think sometimes that it is all too easy to close a door in the act of opening it. There’s a series of two-frame cartoons online: first frame, yes; second frame, but. First frame (yes), a picnic laid out on a blanket; second frame (but) a close-up of the ants trailing across the sandwiches. [The artist is Anton Gudim.]
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We talk of immigration, and what we mean is, keeping people out. We talk of free speech, and what we mean is, canceling people who have misused that freedom. I hope I can use those examples without being contentious, because what I want to say is simply that (yes) I have found a lot of people, connected with them, learned from them already (but) I do realise there are dangers. [Don’t try this at home.]
The internet was a bright new frontier; now it’s a superstate controlled by tech companies and undermined by organised hackers, hostile state actors, intelligence services, the rest. We were looking for real human connection, and what we got was — this lot.
The gentle people have left the airport
A long time ago now, I read Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City (1978). That book, plus various TV shows, plus the advice to wear flowers in my hair if I happened to be going to San Francisco (thank you, Scott McKenzie), made up the whole of what I knew about California in the pre-internet era. “Gentle people with flowers in their hair” would meet me at the airport.
Then the internet happened. California became a place where people invented computer systems in their garages. I don’t want to overstate my ignorance, but — I think we’re all surprised, aren’t we, when we realise how little people from elsewhere know about where we live? [I’ve just looked up Wyoming to make absolutely sure that it doesn’t have a sea coast — but that’s because I’m an obsessive fact-checker. Of course.]
Then — much, much later, long after my first actual visits to California — I attended a fintech conference (see above re cybersecurity) at which the author Douglas Rushkoff (he’s here on Medium) gave a closing keynote speech about his book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus (2016). That was some speech. Here it is (and by the way, it’s all interesting — the first person you see, Leda Glyptis, has just published Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition — or you can start where Douglas Rushkoff starts, at 10.50).
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that there’s any link between Tales of the City and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, beyond the fact that I’ve read both of them. They’re both (good) books of their time, and it just so happens that they both came into my mind as I was sitting here thinking about, one, how the world changes, and two, how the world changes the people who live in it).
So I’m daydreaming. In Tales of the City, Mary Ann Singleton and the other characters attend various public events and celebrations. They work, play, form enduring friendships, resolve plots and subplots, have fun.
Now, I suppose, they’d just be gathering rocks to throw.
While over there on Facebook, I have many ‘friends’.
