I received an uncommonly dickish message today from a friend who I actually know and have hung out with, explaining to another mutual friend why he unfriended me. It was an image of his text to our mutual friend.

In it, he explained that he was ‘sick of my anonymizing myself’. Well, I don’t anonymize myself. What I do, instead, is an art called pseudonomy. This has a wide variety of benefits, many of which I enjoy, and some of which protect me.

I found this bizarre communique fascinating for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that rather than have a conversation with me, he would send me a screen shot of a text between him and someone else.

Had he actually spoken to me, he might have learned that there are many reasons why I do not post personal content ‘about myself’ here… not the least of which is that it is used to produce analytics for corporations that can manipulate our minds, relationships and lives… almost directly… with the data we voluntarily ‘share’ with them.

Meanwhile, we not only do not receive the possible benefits of these analytics, they are deployed directly against us, our relationships… and our human potentials. In effect: we become victims of the analytics our social media activity copiously generates.

Of course, analytics are produced by my (relatively minimal) facebook activity… but mostly, they say very little about my personal life or situations. To get any of that information, one has to communicate with me… directly. And corporations don’t do that. At least, not yet.

The moral of this tale? I suppose it’s what I make of it. One thing that comes to mind is that judging people by their facebook posts is a relatively silly thing to do, especially with me. Another is that some friends are made to be lost : )