In
addition to the usual privacy concerns and distracting ads, I have
some other problems with Facebook.
One
of them, or maybe two, is of my own doing. Since I don't want the
handful of people who follow me on Twitter to be left out, nearly
every of my Facebook postings is a tweet that is also sent to
Facebook, which means they're invariably very short and heavily
edited to fit into the 140 character limit. Being me, I have much
more to say than comfortably fits in that limit, but I try.
Also,
I don't want to be one of those people with several dozen updates a
day so I spend more time biting my tongue (and fingers) than is
probably good for me. And, although I tell myself that I don't need
to say it just this minute but can save it for later, I rarely do.
This means much of my wisdom is known only to me, which is a tragedy.
Then
there's the point of this entry: pictures.
I
guess it's the nature of Facebook that what most people share are
pictures, pictures of all sorts of things, nearly all of which are
better than any pictures I take. A lot of those pictures are in fact
cartoons, many are videos, and nearly all of them are fun to look at.
But I
have little confidence in my ability to take photos and it's also
sort of a pain for me to upload them. Just about everyone now has a
smartphone or some such device that makes sharing photos easy, but
not me. It's not that I'm necessarily cheap, but last time I checked,
there's little to no coverage where I live. My old flip phone works
okay, but 3G or 4G coverage is iffy, at best.
Also,
I'm cheap and am saving myself some stress by my decision not to keep
up with things. It's kind of refreshing, for a change, to be able to
ignore a whole bunch of business and tech developments, just to look
at them dispassionately and not feel bound to keep up or ashamed for
not doing so.
But
I'm not sure that's the point.
I'd
be more than happy to share pictures of where I live and the places I
visit except for a couple difficulties. One, I don't go out and visit
very many places and even fewer of those could be considered
interesting. I'm fairly certain just about everyone has seen what
stores and supermarkets look like and the ones up here aren't any
different than the ones everybody else goes to.
And,
I live in the desert.
What
that means, among other things, is not only is the landscape bleak
and, to most people, uninteresting, but it only very rarely changes
and even when it does, it almost always does so very slowly. Pictures
of nature are always popular, but mostly if they're of something neat
to see.
There
may or may not be wildlife up here. Other than birds in the morning
and evening, just about every creature that calls this place home has
learned a valuable lesson: if you're exposed or can be seen, you die.
If the desert sun doesn't get you, something else will.
So,
while there may be many interesting creatures up here, I only very
rarely see them. No flocks of rabbits, no epic migrations of turtles,
not even any armies of snakes, rats, or other rodents. When I have
managed to see something larger than my fist, it's an individual
something and, most likely, soon to regret being so visible.
This
area just doesn't support great or even noteworthy numbers of
anything. Maybe it's a veritable hive of activity during the night,
but that's when I'm usually inside with my dog, Minardi, whom I try
to shield from scorpions and rattlesnakes.
I
could conceivably take pictures of the birds I see every day, but not
any good ones. For some reason, they flee as soon as I show up with
my camera as well as not being anywhere I can see during most of the
day. Besides, everyone has a pretty good idea of what crows look like
and the Internet has much better pictures than I could dream of
taking of mourning doves or roadrunners.
I do
see plenty of ants, but again, they're not much different than the
ones you see. I think sometimes a dragon fly buzzes around in the
evening, but it may just be something that looks enough like one (a
flying insect about as long as a finger) that I call it that.
So,
everyone on Facebook wants pictures, not words, and not only do I
feel more comfortable writing, but there's not all that much for me
to take pictures of.
So,
in the end, I don't have much worth sharing.
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