So our Facebook account has been disabled. Yup, “Monkeywhale Members” was officially taken off the books sometime this evening. We didn’t know until about an hour ago. Just minutes before finding this out I actually uttered, “I’m starting to hate Facebook.” Of course as soon as I realized it was gone, I sort of felt badly about saying it because hate really isn’t the right word. “Frightened by” might be closer. Maybe I should start at the beginning.

Several years ago someone I cared deeply about suggested I join Friendster. Okay, so when I say “several” I should probably say “five… and some change.” One day I innocently took a gander at old Friendster. Within minutes a creepy, bad feeling started to take over my soul. Said person had already accrued a nifty little stack of sultry lady friends and too many of them I knew from around town. But I certainly didn’t know this much info about them or how frequently they liked to communicate with said person.

While I was struggling over the very basic question of whether to list myself as “single” or not (never mind having a picture of myself that I would ever post in a public place) other people seemed to have no problem listing all their life goals, favorite books and movies, what they looked for in a soul mate, worst fears, biggest successes, yadda yadda yadda, all tied up with a brooding photo and some vaguely obscure quote showing us their brilliant mind which we might not have noticed in person.

Years later and life is good. Still have that slight aversion to all this “networking”, though, and not just because it can easily suck the life out of a person. A couple of years ago we finally set up a myspace page for our cat because he kinda liked to check it out now and then and could easily step away from the computer and do more important things like lick his fur or eat crunchies. Sometimes we humans would get immersed in it for too many hours and start learning all sorts of things about people we didn’t want to know. I’d go back and forth between feeling fascinated and vaguely nauseated by some peoples desire to tell the world every seemingly private detail about their life. Call me old. Or private. Or Northern. (Or whatever you want, just do it on Facebook, ok? Not in “real life”. Oh that’s right you can’t, cause our thing is disabled!)

In the spirit of growing up or joining the rest of the world or whatever you want to call it when the time came to set up accounts for Monkeywhale we did so with enthusiasm. It seemed like a good thing. Keep up with everybody, get the word out about Monkeywhale, help save the world, you know. I admit we didn’t read the finer points of the lengthy Facebook guidelines. We were supposed to set up a “page” not a “profile” or something. We screwed up, I admit it, but when they sent me a warning that we might be in violation without any details why, I promptly wrote back and asked for clarification, mentioning that we certainly didn’t want to lose our account.

That was 11 days ago. Not a word. Nothing. Until a message at 8:06pm tonight in which they explained our violation and at the same time informed us that we could no longer use our account. What happened to friendly warnings? Or communication for that matter?! So now we can set up a page. And, just for fun they mention, “We won’t be able to transfer any content or friends to your new profile. Unfortunately we aren’t able to transfer photos, videos or events between accounts at all at this time.” AWESOME. Glad we didn’t spend too much time doing just that.

I admit that it’s started to freak me out a little again lately. The frequency with which people update, the frequency with which we check ours’, the frequency with which people communicate with one another, or more specifically my boyfriend. But that’s okay. That’s just the creepiness talking. Do I need to know what you had for dinner? Or what book you’re reading tonight? No, but then again you don’t need to know what we’re editing or what band we are excited about, but we just put it out there anyway.

So in the spirit of T.M.I. (like blogging, for example) I ask everyone to keep an eye out for our brand new Monkeywhale “page” which will be coming all too soon. I’m sure we’ll crack out on it tomorrow. And of course we’ll need to update you on how it’s going…