Well I understand that I’m not the first and certainly I’m not the last, but I did get banned from Facebook for 15 days. It makes one re-examine this bargain with the Media Devil known as Facebook that many of us have made so that we can feel a part of the on-line life. On Facebook you can keep up with the minutia of your friends and groups and corporations so that you never need have a moment when you feel it isn’t worth trawling through the currents of birthdays, photos, first communions, weddings, reunions, sales offers, recipes, TV shows and whatever else makes up your social world.

The thing that many of us give up for this bargain is all the information that is being data mined from our communications and the rights to ownership of anything we might post and most of all the ability to know what the rules of the game are, so that we can play by the Facebook rules. Certain things are obvious and stated clearly in their “Rules” page.  No nudity, no spamming, “Content that is hateful, threatening, defamatory, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” I get that stuff, what I don’t get is being banned for posting too frequently. Hello, this is a social networking site. Isn’t it there to promote interactions? At least isn’t that what we are supposed to think it is about?

For communicating too often...that’s why my personal and the BUMS Group Facebook page were banned.  Doesn’t it make sense to post news about the BUMS on the BUMS page and other whisky pages? And further more, what is “too frequently?” How about a guideline here? Well I only have so much energy to devote to my hate for inanity, so I’ll drop my rant here, but I just wanted to let the BUMS Facebook followers know that the silence isn’t intentional and hopefully I can figure out how to post/play by their rules even if they won’t tell anyone what they are. Meanwhile you can look for BUMS info on Twitter under @drammaster and TUMBLR at http://scotchpro1.tumblr.com/

Cheers!