Monday, January 30, 2012

Facebook Follies

Because of my career in the comic book industry, a great number of fans have friended me on Facebook. Add in the number of relatives, friends, and acquaintances I actually know and the result is a "News Feed" that is being updated almost constantly. After all, in a sampling of 1300+ people, somebody almost always has something to say.

Some of the postings are amusing, some are informative, some are innocuous. And then there are the ones that make me wonder, "What are you thinking?!" People who are having problems with their spouses (or significant others, family members, or colleagues) really need to think twice before posting comments on Facebook about them.

Would they hang a sign on the bulletin board at work that proclaims, "My ex-husband doesn't make child support payments"? Or get up in a restaurant and announce, "My sister-in-law is a drunk"? Why, then, post such things on Facebook where I and all the rest of their "friends" can see it?

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Speaking of Facebook and such, I must confess to having become addicted to playing Words With Friends. I have about twenty different games going at the moment, playing against relatives, friends, comic book pros and fans, and CTY colleagues.

While most of the games are just fun, a couple of opponents and I have raised the bar. Before each move, we consider what "triples" we could be opening up to be used against us, where to place high-score letters like the Z and the Q so they can't be used in another word, etc. Most of these games go down to the very last move before the winner is decided and no lead is ever safe. Indeed, even after I scored 147 points on a single word, I wasn't sure I'd win till we were finished.

[A note to all my Facebook friends: My playing Words With Friends should not be used as a reason to invite me to play Farmville, Cityville, Castleville, Mafiaviille, Zoomingcarsville, or other games of that sort.]

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Finally, speaking of Facebook invitations and all the comic book fans I have as friends, it is a virtual certainty that I will not be attending sales, signings and other events at your local comic shop in California, Iowa, Toronto, England, Australia, and so many other places around the globe. Chances are that most of the 1400 other people you've invited will also not be showing up. How about spending just a little time creating a sub-list of your friends who might actually be in the neighborhood?

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