Have I Offended You?

S, my favourite employee at work, was discussing with me something I'd written on facebook.

"The stuff you write cracks me up," said S.

Of course, I kind of liked that.

S and I just had this shine for each other from the very first moment we met one another. She's cute and bubbly and funny and we just liked each other from the beginning.

Beck waded in and said to me that she was going to disconnect from my facebook page because she couldn't have other people reading what I write. She butted in to S and my conversation, saying it twice.

"Fine," I said. "I really don't care that much about it, whatever you like."

Be my friend, don't be my friend, I really don't take it that seriously. Whatever makes you happy.

And I really don't care, I find Facebook dull and boring and a complete disappointment. I think it's stupid and I only write stupid things on it. Aby and I communicate on it and we can get quite black in our humour. Ab's humour is as dark as mine.

The funny thing is that I only connected with Beck recently, kind of against my better judgement. But, she and I had talked about it quite a lot and it seemed silly after working together for nine years to be talking about it quite so much and not to hook up as friends.

However, apart from S, I wouldn't connect with anybody else from work, I was making an exception. As Shane told people at his work when they tried to connect with him on Facebook, my private life is my private life and I'd like to keep it that way.

Mostly, I find that a lot of people have a lot of really boring things to say on Facebook. There's not enough space to elaborate, you can only write so much, which usually turns out to be the equivalent of shopping lists, or something equally as boring.

But then I thought about it. I never write on Beck's page, or normally anyone else's for that matter, I write on my own and people respond to it. So, only people I have made friends can read what I have written, there is no chance of Beck's family ever reading it. So, either she is being a complete techno moron, which I doubt but it's possible, or the other conclusion is that I have offended Beck herself. Which is odd because Beck isn't a prude, she has a good sense of humour, I would never have thought she would be offended by anything I say. She thinks alot like I do.

There are two other reasons, more esoteric - the one that rules the world so well now, it has been implemented by pollies and capitalism and it has hit like a virus and infected nearly all of us, fear. I do write "off coloured" things, it amuses me and certain friends who have black senses of humour encourage me and join in. Some people are fearful of "off coloured" things today.

The other is conservatism. We're all getting much more beige and old fashioned, more so than we used to be, we're nearly back to the 1950's on that one. So writing "nice" things, I suspect, is much more excepted, people are more comfortable with that.

I told Shane and he responded with, "You know, the level at which you are offended is way different to most people's, you know that."

I was going to go in and de-friend Beck tonight myself, I'd rather she wasn’t a friend if she thinks I’m offending her, or whoever it is she thinks is going to be offended. I didn’t really want her as a friend anyway, not particularly, I just thought it was the right thing to do. See where it gets you, doing the right thing.

Anyway, I’ve come up with something really offensive now, so let’s see what that does.