Twitter Twits, Facebores, and Instagoons

Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it, said Jon Ronson, a man I’d never heard of until his quip about spaghetti. I read this somewhere, as I’ve never used social media—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—and hope never to. Why would I, unless I wanted to make trouble for myself? Not everyone needs to know what you’re doing all of the time. Or anytime, for that matter.

They say the most destructive four-letter word in social media is “send.” (Just as the scariest three words in American literature are “Joyce Carol Oates.”) I recently received an e-mail from a young woman I’ve taken out to dinner occasionally calling me all sorts of names. According to her I had propositioned her and had offered her money. By e-mail, that is. That, I can guarantee you, I had not done, but I didn’t bother to answer, as I had never sent her one in the first place. All this had supposedly taken place by e-mail. The only thing I know how to do is send and receive e-mails. I have no way of knowing if someone used my name to proposition her, or if one can pretend to be someone else while e-mailing. And I don’t care to find out.

While I’m at it, I have yet to see a single person reading a newspaper—God forbid a book—while I walk the streets of New York in the Upper East Side every day. But what I have seen are people punching away at those ghastly contraptions they hold while inside Shakespeare & Co., a bookstore I have morning coffee in occasionally. Just think of it: people using those idiotic machines inside a place that sells books. A bit like masturbating inside a whorehouse.

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