A Zucker Born Every Minute

If I want to share a photographic of my grandkids, I’ll just send it along to
you in an email! This is a wonderful picture of my Chicago granddaughters.

I swore off Facebook a couple of years ago – I took the pledge – and with the help of some good friends I’ve managed to stay off it.
by Charlie Leck

Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth will become much clearer after today and, likely, much larger. Let’s just say he’ll be worth many billions of dollars more than he is now. He is not yet thirty years old.

Facebook, a company that I can’t quite believe could be worth that much and which I am at a total loss to explain to anyone who hasn’t dabbled in it, will go public today and many deranged people will be frantically trying to buy stock in the company. I will not. I’m too confused about just what Facebook is to invest money in it.

I fooled around in Facebook for a couple of years. I eventually had to step back and count my chips. What the hell am I doing here? I have books to read, stories to write and rounds of golf to play. Frankly, I’d be benefited more richly if I got more deeply into Outdoor Grilling by Zorn Burntfinger. And I have John Sandford’s latest book to read also (Buried Prey).

I had a few good friends on Facebook and a few new and intriguing ones with whom I would have been happy to keep in touch. I suggested to them that we communicate in that extremely old fashioned way – by email – but not a single one of them took me up on the offer. That means, I am sure, that they are either not interested in retaining the contact or they think I am a sick, stuck-in-the-mud, out-of-touch old fart. It’s just that there were things I wanted to say to Cecilia that I didn’t want to say to Ralph; and there were things about my photography in which Cooper would be interested that would have bored the hell out of Helen.

Today, I officially lose the argument, and Mr. Zuckerberg wins – big time! Yet, unless something spectacularly new happens, I’m off of Facebook – turned off by it and pissed off by it. If Maureen wants to me to see photographs of her grandkids, she can send them along the old-fashioned way – via email.

My friend, Sam, disagrees with me. So, I asked him to explain the benefit(s) of Facebook – beyond starting a revolution in Egypt, I mean – and he certainly couldn’t do it to my satisfaction. Oh, well!

To quote the famous P.T. Barnum, “There’s a zucker born every minute!”

And this is my Oregon grandson proudly showing off
his new baseball uniform just before his very first game!

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Facebook World

How is it the Coen Brothers put it? This is no country for old men!
by Charlie Leck

My wife, who is computer challenged and has a difficult time keeping her email organized (she has 290 unread messages in her in-box), has opened a Facebook account. She immediately got dozens of requests to be friends with this person and that.

“How do I do that?” She screamed from her office out to me. I was preparing my coffee in the kitchen.

“You’ll figure it out,” I replied. Just keep playing around.

“I want to look at these pictures?” She screamed. “How do I do that?”

I was sitting over a small bowl of fruit now. I didn’t feel like moving.

“You’ll figure it out. Just keep playing around!”

I tried Facebook a few years ago. I ended up not liking it. It was strange, because I had just reconnected with a whole bunch of people from my childhood and I was curious about them. However, I ran into difficulties and got led to a web site that streamed malware into my computer. It cost me a significant amount of money to have it removed. The strain on my brain and having my computer down for a couple of days was the hardest part. I parted ways with my Facebook friends. I had hoped they might keep up with me by email – I asked them to -- but they didn’t. I guess you either do Facebook or you do nothing.

Maureen Kielly and Cecelia Parker are out there somewhere in a Facebook world and I’d love to make contact with them, but I just ain’t going through that experience again. Maybe, had I been a dozen years younger or so, I could have made it work.”

“Charlie, come help me with this Facebook thing. People want me to post a photograph! How do I do that?”

“I’m reading! I can’t help! Just figure it out. I’m sure you can buy a 400 page book in the store that will tell you how to do it. Maybe you can get one of the kids to teach you over Thanksgiving weekend.”

Facebook isn’t for old guys! Give me a break!

Look! I’m blogging, ma!

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Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Facebook Adieu

One day, while browsing around on Facebook, reading some incredibly innocuous, repetitive and boring comments by perfectly nice and interesting people under other circumstances, I stopped and asked myself: What the hell are you doing? I decided to sign off.
by Charlie Leck

I went to Facebook a few times each week, hoping to find some kind of comment from the people I like best in my life. Most of the time there was nothing there. I complained to one of my friends about his failure to check in once in a while; and he replied with something that made sense.

“I don’t care for Facebook,” he said. He’s a fellow my age, with an enormous amount of common sense. He listed a number of problems he’s had with Facebook and cataloged the time he’s wasted there.

“Okay,” I agreed, but let’s at least keep in touch with regular emails. I reread this guy’s Facebook message to me a few times and decided he was spot on about the failures of Facebook relationships.

With that, I decided to deFacebook and it was something of a relief to me that the decision was made.

I’ll admit that one good thing that comes from one’s Facebook experience. One is reunited again with people with whom one might think connections had been forever broken. I may be forfeiting making other reconnections like that, but at least I won’t have to hear (or read) about lonesome brown cows that were found in some Facebook friend’s fictional farmyard. And I won’t need to worry about rejecting the “friendship” request of some person I would barely nod to in ordinary social settings.

And, I doubt that a single one of my Facebook “friends” will every even realize that I am gone. The ones who really care will continue brightening up my days by sending me regular emails.

I am no longer on Facebook and it feels quite great!