THE TYGRRRR EXPRESS

Before getting to football, today is a day for me to bask in all my glory.

I am on the verge of having my 1000th Facebook Friends.

I think I speak for all of mankind when I say that nobody cares.

For those of you who do care, heaven help you.

Yet to celebrate this absolutely useless milestone metric, I will be celebrating that person, whoever they are.

I resisted using Facebook. I think social media has turned us into the nation of Narcissista. Yet I found a use for Facebook.

I have a blog and three books. Using Facebook allows me to promote my blog and my books.

I am not on here to play Farmville or Mafia Wars. I have never poked anybody and have no desire to be poked.

I have friends in real life. I have always said that there is no need to contact me on the computer if you have my phone number, and there is no need to talk on the phone if you have my address. My friends come over to watch football. We talk football and politics. Yet to go online and just talk sports with strangers seems a bit of a waste of my time.

Sure, I could reach out to people I have not spoken to in ages. What inevitably happens is we catch up, and then have nothing to talk about. These are good people, but the reason why we have our friends is because those are the people we have a sufficient bond with to continue the relationship.

Some people “de-friended” me. Ok. I guess that deserves a shrug seeing as I did not immediately notice.

I have refused many friend request, mostly from politicians simply looking to rack up friends.

Racking up Facebook friends takes us back to our days of youth, when we bragged over which dad could beat up which other dad, and who had more cars, more money, more sex, or larger (redacted). Now we see who has the most friends, or in Facebook translation, people we barely know who barely know us.

I contact people for business purposes. I do not want to get invitations to events in Libya or anywhere else where I know nobody.

Even worse than Facebook is Twitter. Celebrity tweets are coming from celebrity twits. Nobody cares who went to the mall, what restaurant at the food court they ate at, what they ordered, or any other minutiae of their mundane lives.

I have a Twitter account. When I post my column on Facebook, it automatically exports to Twitter. Once a day, people can read my column. Regarding what else I do from when I wake up to when I sleep at night is so colossally boring that people tracking me will keel over from narcolepsy.

Yet we live in a society that celebrates metrics. We like round numbers. So as I approach my 1000th Facebook friend, I am prepared to honor them.

I am also not sure what causes volatility, since the other day I had 997. Then it dropped to 996. Then it was back at 997. Now it is at 998. This was all without me sending a single friend request or accepting one from somebody else. If others understand it, bully for them.

My prediction is that reaching 1000 will take time for several reasons. I refuse friend requests from people who just collect friends as a hobby. I also send very few friend requests myself.

Most importantly, this column will probably remind people that they have been meaning to delete me for quite some time, and I helped remind them. Maybe I can make a game of it and see how many friends I can lose with one badly written column.

(Then again, if that was the standard, I would have had zero friends with each passing column.)

At some point I will reach 1000. That person will be celebrated. I will dedicate an entire Saturday column to them and give them the internet equivalent of winning a prize. It will be just like a prize, only with zero actual value.

So whoever you are out there, feel free to be my 1000th Facebook friend. I will make you infamous.

Better yet, rather than do that, just become a fan on Facebook of the TYGRRRR EXPRESS. That is my fan page, and that one does matter.

Then read my blog every day and buy my books.

At some point I will publicly apologize for this column. If it is in my next book, I will apologize for the entire book.

My 1000th friend…who will it be?

The excitement is building to a fever pitch…for somebody, somewhere.

eric

Philadelphia Eagles at Tennessee Titans

(Titans by 3, they cover)

Buffalo Bills at Baltimore Ravens

(Ravens by 13.5, they win but fail to cover)

Washington Redskins at Chicago Bears

(Bears by 3, Redskins win outright)

Pittsburgh Steelers at Miami Dolphins

(Steelers by 3, Dolphins win outright)

St. Louis Rams at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

(Buccaneers by 3, they cover)

Cincinnati Bengals at Atlanta Falcons

(Falcons by 3.5, they win but fail to cover)

San Francisco 49ers at Carolina Panthers

(49ers by 3, Panthers win outright)

Jacksonville Jaguars at Kansas City Chiefs

(Chiefs by 1, they cover)

Cleveland Browns at New Orleans Saints

(Saints by 13, they win but fail to cover)

Arizona Cardinals at Seattle Seahawks

(Seahawks by 5.5, they win but fail to cover)

Oakland Raiders at Denver Broncos

(Broncos by 8.5, they win but fail to cover)

New England Patriots at San Diego Chargers

(Patriots by 2.5, they cover)

Minnesota Vikings at Green Bay Packers (-3)

(Packers by 3, Vikings win outright)

New York Giants at Dallas Cowboys (-3)

(Cowboys by 3, they cover)

eric

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 at 3:05 am and is filed under SPORTS, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.