No I won't be your "Fan" on Facebook - Stop bugging me!

Lately, I’ve noticed my local news programs touting their Facebook pages at every opportunity and repeatedly asking viewers to be their “Fan.” You mean it's not enough for you that I am up a 6 am enduring your insipid banter and not hurling large objects at the TV screen? You exist on my TV for the purpose of providing me with a weather forecast and assuring me that the apocalypse has not or is not occurring. I need both these things to start my day with confidence. I don’t need you to plead with me, like the pathetic cross eyed kid in grade school who creeped everyone out by rocking back and forth at his desk eating paste and boogers, to be your friend. I mean it is starting to sound rather desperate, this lunge towards social marketing. Just because you have a page on a social networking site, it doesn’t make you cool. It is definitely not cool to beg for attention either.

To be fair, my distaste for this marketing tactic may have a little to do with my own personality. As very smart and slightly awkward child, I was an outsider in my small town. I pissed off my peers by being smarter than them and at the same time I was pathetic at sports. I never felt like I belonged, and I decided early on that belonging wasn’t cool. I became devoted to the things on the fringes. I liked the weird music, the books that were different, and the arty films. When one of my obsessions hit the main stream, I would lose interest in it completely. Like it became tainted by the masses and suddenly become uncool. It had “sold-out” for the sake of popularity.

I was a drama kid and later, a Theatre Major in college. I never wanted to join a group or allow people to label me according to my interests. Thankfully I have grown out of most of these tendencies. Although I still can’t bring myself to commit to a political party. Still there is one little black corner of my heart that finds this lust for popularity and acceptance very distasteful. A little room with black walls, lots of candles, music by XTC and a shrine to River Phoenix.

It is for this reason that I have resisted the internet, cell phones, and mp3 players. Eventually I will adopt the technology, but I have to plant my Army surplus combat boots somewhere and pick a line I won’t cross.

So that is why, local news and corporate entities, I will never be your Fan on Facebook.