The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

So even way down here on the digitally derelict South End, the Big News is the 100 billion dollar sale of Facebook.  It’s hard to imagine for most of us accustomed to our own social media in the primitive form of Jolene’s Beauty Salon or the South End Marina and Bait or Gossip Mill Central  — the Diner.  Rumors fly fast down here, but usually not because we started them ourselves.  Back in the sad days of party line phones, we might glean a secret or two listening in, then pass it along at the Tyee Store so that two or three days later half the island knew Sharon So and So’s kid had been busted on drug charges or Jimmy D’s son had knocked up his girlfriend or Carl X. down at the garage had totaled his hot rod going 100 down the State Park hill.

The gravevine was primitive but effective.  Nowadays we got the hive mentality, happy Borgs one and all.  Wouldn’t want to watch a movie if our ‘friends’ didn’t watch it.  Wouldn’t dream of going to a restaurant if our ‘friends’ didn’t recommend it.  Wouldn’t buy a Ford if our ‘friends’ hadn’t bought one too.  I don’t crawl out of bed unless I’m absolutely 100% positive everybody else had already got up too.

Conformity is apparently IN.  If nothing else, it SELLS.  And in the New Religion called Capitalism, that’s all that matters.  The South End — always a tweet or twitter behind the times — just never figured out that folks would pay for gossip.  If Jolene had analyzed how her patrons would not only pony up for a perm but then zero in on their preferences, she’d be dumping the Salon on the open market for a billion or two.  And Tyee Store would still be open…..   Just not bricks and mortar, except maybe their fancy outhouse.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 at 4:49 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. 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.