I'd love to Poke you, but I'm Married

Whenever I log on to Facebook it tells me I’ve been poked by someone, but I have no idea if it’s recent or if it was in 2008.

I’m always unsure what to do. I don’t want to poke them back – what if poking isn’t cool anymore? But I also don’t want to appear rude and ignore their virtual prod.

This is just one of the reasons we need an online manual of Facebook etiquette.

In such a manual we would learn that updating your status during a date is akin to rearranging your man-junk (what a friend likes to call a cabinet reshuffle) for all to see, even if it is to say ‘Nathan just told a funny joke’ (which, if I’m honest, would be breaking news… but even so).

This guide could also go a long way to stopping those cryptic ‘I’m so sad :(’ statuses followed by an ‘I don’t want to talk about it…’ when long-face-enquiries come forth – because, if you’re glum, no one wants to then reply ‘Well, why the fuck did you tell us then?’

There is nothing more despicable than the attention-seeking status update.

In some ways Facebook is a game –SimPersonality, if you like.

Remember when you first joined and felt a right loser coz you only had five friends. So you searched your friend’s friends list and if you vaguely recognised the person it was a like lovers reunited in a field of daisies.

Hell, even the postman would be there liking your liking of ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’.

A friend of mine created a personality by thinking of the most normal name he could and finding a picture online of an unremarkable face – he’s got loads of friends and he doesn’t exist.

I reckon an eighth of the profiles are just people’s pornstar names (that’s your first pet’s name plus your mother’s maiden name).

But in some respects it is more real than reality.

Just think of the last time you discovered that someone had unfriended you. It’s kind of the final word on that relationship, and brings new meaning to the dumper’s cliché, “We can still be friends”.

One of the first things I learnt in school was how to answer the phone politely; maybe my kids will learn that when becoming FB friends for the first time you should post a nice message on their wall enquiring about their wellbeing.