hirokono

this blog must become an ode to tomi hirokono.  

facebook fool

A while ago I thought I would put my name [+ minimal information: birthday, place of residence – nothing more] on facebook.  See what happens.  Nothing much did, except being stalked by people who belong or should belong firmly in my past.  Fuck it, I am going to name + shame them:  I know that they can track me down on this blog, + post comments.  Janvika, whose requests for a ‘roll in the hay’ I turned down flatly, two decades ago, “Hallo gorgeous!”, + the ghastly  Heike [embarrassing, like an aged drag queen] + ‘Scilla.   These were clients,  not friends,  not lovers.

I started getting requests for friendships from people I didn't know, at a time when I am refining relationships, + - bizarrely – from people who are already friends.    Why should I communicate with these friends on facebook when I already do so via e mail?

So, to see what I wasn’t missing,  I lived in facebook world for 2 weeks: I accepted all requests for friends, read cosy chats between mothers + children.  Read right on articles + postings by an unsurprising leftish faction.  

I tried.  I posted the photo of Tutu:

                                

The only comment was from a  friend who  ‘liked’ [ticked]  it  What happened to:  Great photo.  Or thanks  Or it made me a smile.  Or grand old man.

I love the internet.   No more endless arguments, with banks  + shops who shamefacedly said they hadn't received the instruction or order.   Reading an array of international news,  accessing information at a simple click.   But the social networking sites are not for me.

Simply, I don't get any pleasure from being in a group.  We are all driven by the herd instinct.  I cant say whether it was because I had been isolated + rejected throughout my youth that I found my strength in my individuality, + independence.  Or whether I was rejected because I didn’t belong, couldn't play sports.  Both, I am sure.

 What doesn't destroy me, strengthens me. – Nietzsche. 

I remember the epiphany clearly. I had gone to sleep the night in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, with footloose, brightly dressed, dope smoking travellers.  Europe would, I had thought, understand me [it did],  I would belong, feel the comfort of belonging to a sports club, or family or the travellers.  I sat upright in the middle of the night.  I didn’t belong here or anywhere. 

If you surrender your thought process to a religion or any group, you cripple your own thought, your individuality.   A teacher once told me,  when I was aged  18, you have not chosen an easy path.  I suppose not.  I cant remember choosing.  I had dreams out of my standing.  My family would have been happier if I had become a bank clerk. 

I have deactivated my profile.  If I dont - even accidentally click into facebook for 2 weeks, it will, I am told, be deleted.

Facebook is the medium + the message  of the present, the future.  + the young will need to work with the pitfalls.    The creation of identities, + personalities.  Just like that.  Facebook rifling through address books of friends + friends of friends.   Past or present or future lovers, friends/enemies, employers.

These dilemmas are only the tip of a problem that will grow as ever-younger web users make ever brasher statements and post ever wilder images and videos on a growing range of social media.

It's a lesson that students would do well to remember. And one maybe even parents and teachers should add to their web cautions to teenagers.

Always think about what you're putting online. One day it could be back to bite you. – Martin King, The Independent [UK] online editor. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-chief-my-fears-for-generation-facebook-2055390.html

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

die huis van God

you know what it is like.  one forgets.

Rossetta asked me why I was conversing with the synod of the NG Kerk.   when I heard .  twice.  when I hear about the rumours, that we were Satanists and that the sculptures had caused the floods, I invited the dominee to discuss the matter.  He snubbed my letter, as he would do the 2nd one I wrote a few months later, asking him if he was afraid of the Devil.  Now I am in contact with the synod.  They don't quite know what to do. Why am I doing this?  Götterdämmerung?  salvation?  flexing a muscle?  needing to know, see, hear judgement. 

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.  Dostoevsky 

What I had forgotten is that it is the individual that matters to me, more than anything else.