RSLJ: Article 14 Take my face off…


By far one of the more nauseating human traits is when someone ‘gets beyond him/herself’. Most people are hard to stomach in their own right but then exists the middle class of people between the people that make you want to swallow your own car keys than engage in conversation with them and the upper echelon of society, rockstars. This middle group is sort of like a conversational bourgeoisie.

As mentioned this middle class is potable to a degree but like running water can become rancid and insipid rather quickly. This happens when they ‘go beyond themselves’. Breaching this translucent line differs from person to person depending on the poverty of their middle class situation. Let me place this is context.

Say for instance at the Sunday after Met catch up braai the boys are gloating about their weekend conquests and a young lad constructs a story about how he innocently gave two fillies a lift home and it turned into a world class samoosa orgy. Oh shut up kid, we know it didn’t happen! Save some of that spice for the meat; you’re going beyond yourself!

How this relates to the subject of this article may be as clouded as the judgment of the previously mentioned two fillies in choosing the embellisher as their transport home but I’ll clear it up shortly for you.

To my mind the technological advances that the bright people in lab coats make everyday are startling and they advance society in big giant steps but I think people are too caught up in the gimmick trend side of it and jump from one advancement to the next without realising that the incumbent step that they just rendered redundant achieved the same thing…

Hence, we are so caught up in being the first to catch onto something we miss that point that we don't even need it. We go beyond ourselves..

Now to prove my admittedly clouded point I will use a snapshot of something that has brought myself under some heavy fire of late, but I am fine with that…because now I will tell you why...! Rockstars and Showstoppers, let’s talk Facebook… (more like a narration but stop reading when you know I am right*)

Communication is luckily for me an aspect in which I am experienced enough to talk authoritavely upon. Ever since my parents sent me away from the harmful kryptonite deposits on our home planet to this one I have been an interstellar orphan and had to build my relationships founded on solid communication.

Every argument advocating facebook delivered to me has centred on the point that it is the easiest and most efficient way to communicate with your friends. You can make photos available for all your friends to check out, you can send them cute e-gifts, you can leave little messages on their walls that they then can check and reply to so you don’t have to waste time sending out emails and you can poke them at will. I like the poke part but lets not digress.

Fearing oversimplification but for the sake of argument facebook is just an online tool that you can connect all your friends wherever they may be into one fuck off web and communicate with them at the touch of a button. Agree? Brilliant!

This does achieve a useful objective, as mentioned I am skilled in the art of trans-geo, -oceanic and -planetary communication and this brings all my important people into my laptop room. Differ with me here if you will but I think you might find it difficult, everyone can categorise their friendships and relationship into degrees.

The degrees differ according to various factors like, the length of your friendship in years, how you know the person, what you have been through and the physical proximity you have with them. All these culminate into how ‘close’ you are with them. Since this is an emotional term that extends beyond me feeling hot or cold I am not going to try and define it but I think you get it…

The school friend you have known since you got thrown out of Mrs Larner’s English class with in std 1 and have been thrown out of numerous places with since is a 1st degree friend. The guy you shared a history tut with in 2nd year and still have mutual friends is a 3rd degree friend. Any arb guy after that becomes an acquaintance.

Here is where distance plays a role. The rockstar special A grade friend you rocked cape town with during varsity may up and put the Atlantic between your exploits but when he returns, even for a fleeting 72 hours of passion a few years from now you pick up straight away from pole position on the starting grid. You see, that kind of friendship eluded convention and you don’t have to instance message each other to vindicate that.

However 2nd and 3rd degree friend need to be kept in contact with otherwise they slip down the starting grid and may end up in the pitlane with Tokuma Sato. The distinction, you communicate with the rockstar friend because you want to, you communicate with the others because if you don’t you lose them. The solution. Facebook!

I say bullshit. And my degrees of friendship analogy should make that clear. I am going to gloss over the whole privacy issue because it is such a glaring loophole in the facebook argument that it is unfair to attack it from that angle, and the story of how a girl got raped over MYSPACE in America kind of proved my point.. I am also not going to throw cheap low blows at the system either by ridiculing how people portray themselves in the photo profiles with sepia tones or my placing a better looking friend in the fore of the picture. Instead I am attacking the core. The communication that is fast and efficient argument.

Breaking it down like this may make it easier. You are either FB-ing a friend in a far away country or one locally, or you are in the far away country FB-ing back home. So back to my friendship degrees, if you friend far away is so important to you surely you can make the time to send them a more personal, and private email through which you can communicate on a level that reflects the strength of your friendship. You want to chat? Do it in private on gmail, because that is faster than FB and private, or sms the guy. Ha!

Now this aspect of FB really perplexes my brain. Why the fuck do friends who live in the same city FB each other. Please show me a more plastic uninvolved fake way of continuing a friendship. Why don’t you meet up and have a proper conversation. I think it is a sad time when 10 friends interact over a plasma screen when they could rather all meet at one place and do it properly. Call me old fashioned but I like to be able to look my mates in the eyes and punch them on the arm when they’re being stoopid.

If that aspect perplexed me then this one really confuses the fuck out of me. You take a year off, leave everything behind and spend loads of dollars to go overseas to see the world. You get there and then spend 2 hours everyday in the WiFi section of Barnes and Nobles writing on the walls of all your friends you left behind. Come the fuck on! You could have achieved the same thing with half the money by buying an HSDPA 3G vodacom package and a state of the art notebook and driven up the West Coast for 6 months. You go overseas to meet people and interact with another culture. Stop facebook poking the girl you never came right with at varsity and go chat up the cute girl sitting across from you near the espresso machine because she is American and that makes her easy…

You want to keep in contact with your real friends. Take the time to email them. You want to show them pictures of what you doing? Gmail them or start a blog. It’s quicker and you might end up with more photos since you will spend more time hitting on girls with your cool accent than FB-ing mates stuck at home. And those photos your mates will really want to see…

In a walnut. The craze that is facebook serves a superficial purpose of mass interaction with numerous people but doesn’t suffice to qualify as the substance a friendship needs. Yes it is fast but so is email or sms. If you’re in Rome, spend your Euros trying to bang the daughter of an emperor don’t spend them in a dingy Internet café. If you’re at home get out of the house and go meet someone face to face.


You may raise the counter argument that I spent 20 minutes at home typing this advice rather than following it. Well, with great power comes great responsibility. This blog gives us the power to get you laid so it is our responsibility to bear the burden of sacrifice to do it so you spend less time on facebook and more time with legs wrapped around your face.

Remember, young hot vixens throw their sex cards at us but that is why we have the authority to have a lifestyle blog not a result from having one….

(*Please note that if you read as far as the starred parenthesis you unwittingly agreed with everything I said, cause at some point you will have to stop reading…like now…thank you my people)