Two Question Marks Too Many

“Did you just tag me as a friend on facebook???”

Those were the stunned words emailed to me by my younger brother yesterday. After several years of advances and retreats, fits and starts, and outright hand-wringing, I finally took the plunge and joined Facebook this week.

What took me so long? I don’t know. I guess it’s the whole privacy thing. I mean, when you read about the British girl who meant to invite 15 friends to her birthday party on Facebook and ended up having 21,000 people RSVP her, you get a little nervous. The security settings seem dubious to me. And then you read about the government pressing websites to install back doors for them to spy on people if they want to, and, well, you go weak in the knees.

Plus, trying to register on Facebook as a business (which is what I'd originally intended to do) is not a great experience; you don’t get all the perks that you do if you register as an individual. Which I guess makes sense for a site that’s trying hard to connect people to people and not so much people to products and services.

Let me quickly add that I’ve been on Twitter and LinkedIn for years, so I’m no social media dilettante. But for some reason, for hardcore Facebook devotees (like my brother), none of that matters. You can tweet all the way to the stars and back; it doesn’t mean a thing. All that matters is Facebook. If you’re not on it, they think, then you must be on something.

Yes, I know that taking the Facebook plunge now makes me hopelessly behind the times. But I’ve got a few projects in the works that will probably involve me taking on some social networking responsibilities, so I figured the time was nigh. For a few years now there’s been a 500 million pound gorilla sitting in my room, eating my bananas, drinking my Capri Suns, so I figured I’d better educate myself on the biggest player in the social media game.

But what of all my brother’s question marks?(??)

For my tastes, and I am a teetotaler when it comes to grammar and politeness, he added two question marks too many. This indicates (I think) a contempt by the younger generation for us oldsters wanting in on the action. I mean, he doesn’t even know yet that I’m getting on the Facebook carousel primarily for business reasons (to promote non-profits that I am working with to develop media outreach strategies).

I can only imagine how many question marks, peppered with exclamation points, that revelation would elicit from him.