Facebook Cocktail Party

Because Facebook relies so much on the idiom of pop music, there are clear limits on what you can express. You quickly learn that people only want to hear happy news.

If your marriage is a mess or you got laid off, there is really no room for such talk on Facebook. Here even pop love songs have more range, for you can always find a tune about love gone bad on the radio, but Facebook lacks the anonymity of pop. Public performance of a sad song does not guarantee an automatic link between the singer's personal life and the lyrics. Of course the audience always wants to connect the song to gossip about the singer, but we know it takes some effort, some speculation.

On Facebook, any sad posting is automatically attached to us, so we suddenly become very bourgeois about what we write. Facebook becomes an upscale cocktail party, witty banter that always shields the speaker. Here the clichés of pop music come to our rescue. If you want to say something sad, you can phrase it as a familiar refrain.

But even here, we middle aged users don't announce anything too intimate. We don't wear our alienation on our profile page. No Mohawks, nasty body art or chemical excesses to be seen. What's most amazing: these good manners are entirely self-imposed.