"I had to hear about it on Facebook!"

I have heard this phrase from a couple of people lately. It is said with a tone of surprise. As if, when most of your friends and family are on a certain social networking site, there is some better way of announcing news such as, "our baby was born", or "we are moving".

Let us set aside for a moment the fact that the people in question do not even have a Facebook account and thereby did not really hear about it on Facebook, and go through the scenario step by step.

Baby is born. Parents are very excited and want to revel in the joy the addition to the family. I make a single post on this blog about the event. I share it on various social networks to inform my friends and family and anyone else who might care. Done. This process, because the blog post was pre-drafted with blanks to fill in, takes less than a minute. Now I can spend time with my family.

Now comes along some asshole who expects me to go old school and spend the first half hour of my child's life with a list of phone calls to make about the good news. Nope. Sorry. Not going to happen. Technology is beautiful. Embrace it.

Social networks are basically personal bulletin boards that are there to share pertinent (or many times in my case useless) personal information with others. Why would anyone in their right mind be surprised that people post major life events on those bulletin boards?

Also, if you do not have a Facebook account, then you heard about it through word of mouth, or possibly hijacking someone else's account. So you cannot even say that you "heard about it on Facebook!"

Thanks for enduring my rant.

Kirk out.

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