Sunday, March 22, 2009

Sex Offenders, Old Friends, and Cyber Farming

by Pa Rock
Cultural Commentator

Officials in North Carolina have discovered 2,116 of the state's registered sex offenders are on MySpace, and the social networking site has agreed to remove them from its service. State Attorney General Roy Cooper is now requesting similar information and action from Facebook.

I have been on Facebook for a couple of years. My daughter got me to register so that she could share something with me. Whatever she was sharing has been long since forgotten, at least by me, but my name stays on the site and occasionally generates an inquiry from an old friend. Tonight a friend from several years ago popped up in an email that came from the Facebook account. That was a very nice surprise.

Although I am a very passive user, and usually only check my page when something like tonight's communication pops up, I have acquired several "friends" over the past few years. I'm a poor Facebook correspondent, and generally redirect them to my email account if they desire to do much chattering. Email is easy, and I check it several times a day - but Congress could have several salacious sex scandals between the times that I check Facebook.

Recently I learned that a friend had sent me a "tree" on Facebook, and then the service that she used also sent me a tree. Now I apparently have three of four cyber trees on a cyber farm. The trouble is - I don't know how to find the damned farm! A cyber farm is something that I might really enjoy - in case anyone would like to send me some cyber chickens or a cyber goat.

I have friends who really get into Facebook, leaving messages like what they are having for supper or when they are going to bed. I don't begrudge them their passion - after all, I blog daily for my own amusement.

I might even enjoy Facebook if I had the intellect and patience to sit down and master the site. The problem is that my old head will only hold so much quasi-useless information, and if I didn't release some of it every night via the Ramble, it would probably explode!

1 comment:

xobekim said...

Apparently on your myspace page you can open up a thing called "my little green place." That's the garden.

Surrounding your little green space are advertisments.

You can give trees and such to others.

For every ten trees you give, I am led to understand, the advertising revenue generates enough money to purchase a square foot of rain forest.

Hence the cyber aboriculturalist can impact the real world and aid the work of real aboriculturalists.

Each time I see a question like this I am reminded of my grade school requirement to read the story of Rip Van Winkle. Was I sleeping?