Facebook, Hooray

Update: the director's cut
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Today a woman I don't know sent me a friend request on Facebook. I saw that we had a mutual friend who later told me she lives in a different state. I accepted her request. Shortly thereafter she sent me a private message. The following conversation is unedited:

HER: hey, how do you know me?

ME: i don't. you friend-quested me.

HER: oh?

ME: did you not?

HER: you should claim repsonsibility for your actions. an acceptance bears more weight than a request. I know what I did what have you done?!

ME: I'd have to say I disagree that "an acceptance bears more weight than a request," because that's stupid. Initiation is more significant than compliance. See: Nazism.

HER: 'because that's stupid' - clever, in depth analysis
Was it more significant that the Nazis asked the French to submit to their terrors, or that some accepted, and others refused? See: La Résistance.
But I'm not a nazi (though Jews tend to like to bomb me because I look a little aryan and have a german last name, though fuck you, I have native american blood, and I have to live around and look like the same ignorant imperialists that wiped out my naive ancestors), and I'm not necessarily your friend, though you apparently accepted me as such. I think [our mutual friend] generally has pretty good taste in guys, plus it looks like you have good hair. I like my guys dull and pretty, same as I like my mood lighting.

ME: The substance of the Nazis is more central to its own historical narrative, as it is experienced in collective memory, than are the fringes of its influential effect on cultural/national psyches. Those are the details, not the chapter headings. My analogy was meant to point out the absurdity of what you were saying, not start a socio-philosophical dialogue. I'll agree that there is a significant moral component to compliance, but your argument is that it outweighs the intellectual aims and ramifications of the initial extension of connection, which is wrong.

I accept whoever wants to be my friend. It's your affair if you're confused about the nature of your actions as they relate to your own feelings.

Thank you for calling me pretty, although I'm not. I am extremely dull though.

HER: That's like saying the concept 'cubism' is more important than the individual 'cubist' painters, their projects, and the brilliant specificity of their work(s) [a painting like the demoiselles d'avignon sends me into a supersensual overload; I get so excited and stimulated I have to dance around powerful pieces of art like that]. It's like saying that the general summary of the events of the Holocaust, as 'history' remember it, is more important than the terrors individuals and families experienced, or communities, or ghettos, or nations. I guess I am often much more interested in details than abstractions. I recently developed this concept: the infinity of the shared human condition (I also think of Henri Bergson and his conception of experiences and heterogeneous multiplicities). I could go into more detail if you would like, but if you are already dull, I would simply hate to bore you. "I'll agree that there is a significant moral component to compliance, but your argument is that it outweighs the intellectual aims and ramifications of the initial extension of connection, which is wrong." So are you saying that environment and circumstance are more important than individual agency? Recently I was sorta in a depression and just felt very trapped about everything, but I am a big fan of the important figures in history who broke the continuity so to speak, who went against the social, environmental pressures that would normally decide their actions. The Resistance Movement against the Nazis, as mentioned before, is one example. Emile Zola during the Dreyfus affair (the word 'intellectual' was actually coined to describe him, meaning politically engaged writer). Ghandi. Martin Luther King, Jr. My favorites are individuals such as Olympe de Gouges, Louise Michel, Simone de Beauvoir, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Marguerite Yourcenar. I think a request is a rather unilateral action, wheras the action which answers it is completely bilateral. Sorry to place the terrible weight of free will on you, bra.

Well, I'm pretty pretty, maybe enough for both of us.

ME: you're obfuscating the issue with your own obsessions. the conversation began with you asking ME how I knew you. why would I know you? i think it's clear that we're only connected through our mutual acquaintance, so if you're initiating the connection the rationale behind it lies with you. logically, there doesn't have to be a reason behind my acceptance other than that it's an option cleanly presented to me and I don't believe it could hurt me. you asked me what i had "done"--you know what I did, I pressed a button that you made appear on my interface. that's it. what else do you think i was thinking? your entire formula is backwards.

a request is an entreaty, an affirmation is just a reply. the onus is on you to give substance to it, if you want. if you had never made that request we'd never have spoken, so how could I have something to say to you?

HER: Oh yes, all thoughts are obsessions. Do you know what irony is?

Sorry I'm all up in your interface. I don't know if coherence can move in reverse. Maybe if my arguments read as some elaborately constructed palindrome.

I'm truly sorry if you're so dull you have nothing to say to me, though quite the contrary seems true!

It's possible I just like pushing buttons: nothing more, nothing less/

ME: do you contact random strangers and then barrage them with bizarre nonsense all the time, or am i special?

HER: we are all strangers, others cascading at random. no, you are quite unusual---shall we say...er...unique? in fact, more special than you know, or could ever conceive.

didn't anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers, even if they offer you sexual favors?

ME: This has been neat, but for analytical purposes can you tell me if you are actually crazy or just screwing with me

HER: Stop flattering me! I hate when guys give me flowers:(
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That was effectively the end of the civil convo, after which communication broke down.