The heading to this post is a cover story. Last time I posted about the subject of this short piece, I got a creepy email from Hal the Computer saying ‘Hi Jaaarrn, you know we’d really rarhtuuuurrghhh you spoke to us about this kind of issue in private…..’. I’m hoping that, by delaying the identity of the topic for another line or two, the content won’t come up on the excerpt screen.

I’m talking about F******k, OK?

I was trying to get somewhere interesting on the site yesterday, when up popped five staggeringly impertinent questions: did I think Alan had a big problem, did I think Amanda was ugly, would Paul make a good boyfriend and so forth. Paul would make a terrible boyfriend for me because I’m not homosexual, and he used to go out with my daughter: so I wrote ‘no’. What I wanted to write was ‘mind you own f**king business’, but that wasn’t an option on offer. Nor was skipping the answer, because Hal kept on saying “Just five moooorrre questions Jaaaarn, and then we’ll let you go’.

The wheeze behind this pernicious idea is obviously to up Facebook’s user velocity numbers for the next edition of the trade magazine. I use Facebook because if I didn’t, I’d never find out what my friends were up to ever again. I can’t remember the last time I had an unexpected, personal email – or indeed the last time somebody rang to say, “Just fancied a chat about what we’ve been up to”.

I hate the public nature of all this crap, and I think it is, in a libertarian sense, incredibly dangerous. But I do use it. What I will stop doing, though, is answering dumbassed questions just to find something interesting on Facebook’s idiot site.

Not that I’m starting a trend here, you understand –  I don’t really want a # in front of my name – but in future, could all my friends try to remember that I use Facebook through force majeur: it’s not a good way to get my attention.

Sorry to Alan who now thinks I believe him to be a boring tit. And big grump to Katrina who apparently doesn’t like my smile.