Son of Facebook

A sibling of mine and I were recently arguing the merits of Facebook and other social networking sites. Of course I was right, but being tolerant and generous I let her opine freely. I'm often, nay, usually right about such and most things but give others their due particularly in the case of my sister because she is after all several hundred miles distant from me but in times of closer proximity she's got a wicked backhand that can dislodge molars.

I don't get the point of Facebook. I've opened it up once or twice and am basically exposed to small snapshots of people I either don't know at all, don't care to know or know currently or knew once many years ago. The people I know currently I don't need photos of. That's what memory or face recognition is for. Tall blonde woman is Denise. Repeat several times over until its captured in your brainpan and you don't call out her her as "Ivan" at a ballgame. People I knew a long time ago, well that's just an exercise in facially catching up and noting that they've either "aged well" or "time's not been kind" or the pretty bastard is still a pretty bastard and thirty years later can probably walk off with my girlfriend all over again.

Don't think this is autobiographical.

Sis noted that Facebook was much more. It was a networking site that relied on brevity for users to catch up with each other in bits and spurts and not have to commit themselves to long letters or emails summarizing what's been happening with themselves since high school graduation or college or release from prison depending on your aspirations and such.

She noted that she had just caught up with a gal she knew once in college and found that they had had miraculously similar experiences that they shared in forty two characters or less. Either they found their life's calling at the same time in Calcutta working for the Sisters of Mercy and dedicated themselves to God's work on earth or they had the same rose tatoo on the inside of their thighs. I wasn't paying too close attention.

And I wasn't convinced. Admittedly, I don't get it. I can't sort out my Facebook from my Ass Journal from my Elbow Digest.

There is an idea for a networking site I can support though and it came to me the other morning. I'm tentatively calling it S.O.N. which of course is the Social Outcast Network. The structure is simple and you don't have to recommend, invite, tweet, toot, fart inconspicously or otherwise.

As a lone user of SON, you can link into popular groups through a url that allows you to "peer in the window." Groups such as professional organizations or collections of friends can "take pity" on your profile or "keep you at arm's length" or shun you altogether. You can keep up with others by "chattering" about what you're currently involved in or working on or otherwise doing and they can respond to you by "who cares" and "did somebody say something or am I hearing things?"

SON users can of course be connected to each other and can compare groups that they've been "ignored by" or "made fun of by." Connections between SON users would take the forms of "mumbles" or "mutterings."

With SON you could conceivably link up with hundreds of other SON users who would be at the periphery of real social networks not really knowing what to do next. One SON user could compare his or her sorry state to another SON user and note that he or she, as bad as things were, had at least not been kept out of "that" site. They'd feel better. Of course there would be other users who would be better of yet than they.

This would drive traffic immensely.

Not bad for an idea crafted in the cold, grey insomniatic dawn.

Or was that a hangover talking?

Bunny on.