An all-too-common dialogue concerning the modern day question of questions:

You on Facebook Lucy?

-No.

Really?? Why not, too ‘cool’ for it?

-No, I just don’t want one. It’s not that I am against social media, I just don’t want a Facebook account.

Why not?

-You really want to know why? Ok, fine: I will get every fucker I have ever encountered – either through shagging them, having a truly ‘meaningful’ heart to heart with whilst shit-wrecked at a house party 6 months ago or simply by proxy i.e. the girl I sat next to in English class 12 years ago – asking me to be their ‘friend’. I then have to decide whether I want to accept their friendliness - and be bombarded with pictures of them in fancy dress/cakes they’ve baked or ‘kids in bed, wine in hand!’ statuses - or ‘reject’ (how cruel) it where I will then be asked by them (and those who know both of us – mutual ‘friends’) why I don’t want to be their friend; to which I either wave the white flag and accept them or admit that if they set themselves on fire and offered to pay me lots of money to spit on them, I’d still have to ‘decline’.

Well why not set one up under a pseudonym and only tell your friends?

-There’s that word ‘friend’ again – on planet Facebook a friend is not a friend so if I got myself a Facebook how do I negotiate this ‘friend’ thing? On Facebook, what is a ‘friend’? Is it someone already in my life, someone I already communicate with physically? No, I’ll tell you what it is, it’s a commodity, something to accumulate, something to define who and what you are based on how much of it you have. Call me traditional but that aint friendship to me and I want nothing to do with it.

In terms of the pseudonym, this is something I have considered but then I think why do I want to join Facebook under a pseudonym so I can lurk around, unidentified, only speaking to those I actually like and, therefore, already communicate with in person (!), on the phone or via text or email? I have no actual friends outside a 30 mile radius of my house so if I want to reach out I can jump on the train/in my car and have a drink and lovely chat with them. So in answer to the pseudonym puzzler: I would be adopting a false name in order to protect myself from the evils of Facebook or I could save myself the turmoil and (drum roll please) NOT HAVE A FACEBOOK. Ta daaaa!