The New Facebook

After yawning at yet another FB status update along the lines of: “Riding my bicycle this afternoon. Yay!” I couldn’t help logging off and spending a wheelbarrow-full of money.

Not on drink to ease the pain of not having my own bicycle. And not on an actual bicycle to ride myself and maybe exclaim my very own “Yay!” on my very own Facebook wall. In fact, forget the bicycle. It’s metaphorical and wildly random at best.

The money was spent on books, movies and music. And I was content to wait a few days to receive these items; unusual in this ‘instant gratification’ world we now live in.

You see, I’ve started to realise that Amazon might just be the new Facebook.

Even though ‘The Book’ might be “free and it always will be” as advertised after abject international online horror at the mere rumour that they were going to start charging, I don’t mind the spending or even the waiting.

As it were, the waiting is the part I love the most. A few days later, when you’ve forgotten all about your purchase of an old Batman comic you liked as a kid or Britney’s Greatest Hits, you hear a plop through the letterbox and instead of the usual bills and Avon catalogue there lies an exciting gift.

And if you’re like me in any way you’d have forgotten completely about it by now; it’s like Christmas all over again! Even though it may be the Madonna cd you bought for the wife or ‘Zulu Dawn’ for your mum-in-law, it’s still addressed to you so you get to rip the box open.

As long as you put some money every month into an inaccessible account, and draw some cash to spend on bus fare and fags, you can spend to your heart’s content.

And it’s not just entertainment one can purchase. They sell pots and pans and shoes and trousers. They even sell sporting equipment; so very soon I may just be exclaiming a “Yay!”

But I promise I’ll try really hard not to mention it on Facebook.