It’s been a week since I’ve been on Facebook. This blog is helping me stay on the wagon.

My fingers itch for it, but I’ve been able to stay away. It feels like quitting smoking. Cigarettes were a reflex. They were linked to specific contexts, like the waiting-for-the-bus cigarette.

The waiting-for-the-bus Facebook.

It took me many tries to leave cigarettes behind 100%. The fails taught me all the ways not to fail, one painful lesson at a time.

I don’t miss the same overposting marginal acquaintances, day after day. Some of them I was charmed by, but with most of the people whose posts appeared in my feed, we had no relationship apart from the algorithmic sizzle.

I got crushy on one overposting marginal acquaintance – that’s how good the posts were. She dated a slightly less marginal acquaintance who lived across the hall in my freshman dorm. I was not super impressed at the time, but over the decades our tastes must have converged. It wasn’t a sex appeal thing, only the posts.

A few of the people in my feed were real friends, and the social network nourished our relationship in a way that was genuine. One of those folks sent me an email a couple of days ago as a followup to a Facebook thread a month back. I’ll need to develop new lines of connection with the people I care about.

I might even send some letters, that’s how bad things are. At least I still have Twitter.

Wordophobia word of the day: internet (as a verb)

Wordnik is for wordophilia [sic].

vigorish
beatific
girth
improvisatory
obeisance
hotelier
sanguine
ephemera
marginalia
randomalia
liquefy
messily
dailiness
interestingness
lanquidity
prismatic
obsequious
translucent
denouement
qua
detritus

A list of 21 words by aweissman

I wonder if there is a place for wordophobes.

“Wordophobe” is a fine choice for a list of favorite words, or of most feared ones.

Another good non-word is “internet” used as a verb meaning to contact somebody using the Internet. Emailing somebody is internetting them. Calling on the phone is not. DMing is internetting. Knocking on the door is not.

Speaking of turning nouns into verbs, when you do that it is called verbing. A thing about verbing is that verb is a noun, so using it as an action is an instance of verbing. Verbing is verbing.