Morning:
9°c
The new Facebook phenomenon is "25 random things about me". Everyone from John Prescott to Nick Clegg has signed up. Somewhere between the confessional and therapy, it lets you catalogue the minutiae of your life. You then "tag" 25 friends to do the same.
Up to five million notes a week are being created. Many blogs are incredibly witty and uninhibited, others just plain random (current favourite: "I was once bitten by an emu. I deserved it").
This week I signed up. And, oh God, how that blank page yawns before you. You need to be careful: anything too personal, too "crazee", will come back and haunt you. But - given the chance - how can you resist?
So here goes...
1. I like men in dresses - boys with crew-cuts in ballgowns make me giddy.
2. At primary school, they prayed for me in assembly when I was run over. Nothing has been so exciting since.
3. Hotel is the most beautiful word in the English language, closely followed by taxi.
4. I believe people who love cats are the true sensualists.
5. I only became a vegetarian so I could get out of wrapping the bacon in clingfilm as a waitress.
6. Recently I changed from atheist to agnostic. Silly to be too dramatic.
7. I'd rather have a tracker mortgage than a boyfriend.
8. I was no good at being young.
9. I will defend romantic comedies until my dying breath.
10. I am a shabby recycler.
11. I love Annie Lennox's phrase "Men have been the disappointment of my life".
12. When a friend's teenage daughter projectile-vomited over me recently, I found I lacked the generosity gene.
13. Like Philip Larkin, I'd go to China if I could come back the same day.
14. Never say pretentious - it's crossing a picket line in the arts.
15. I hate the idle rich (give me a good meritocrat any day).
16. I am nothing without a blow-dry.
17. Jimmy Connors was my first ever sexual crush.
18. I didn't eat an avocado until I came to London age 18.
19. For years I was the girl you didn't want to get trapped with at parties.
20. I lie at least three times a day.
21. My best friend slept with a famous actor.
22. I suffer from skirt envy.
23. I always spend the cheque before it arrives.
24. When in a panic, I always think: "What would Jodie Foster do?"
25. It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
The minute I slapped it on Facebook, I winced. But the responses have been rather lovely (although half the mothers in London worried it was their child who projectile-vomited).
I thought I was done with Facebook. But in doing this exercise I've discovered an appealing new quality - it gives you the power to surprise the people who know you best.
Reader views (4)
Gents, thanks for your remarkably productive input. Liz, your list is funny, witty and ever so true.
- Caroline, London, 23/02/2009 09:05
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Nobody ever knows what to write on Facebook, so now everybody is grateful for this list idea - how ever dull it may be.
- Chris, London, 20/02/2009 16:51
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Easy there Chris! Anyway, surely some of the above are fairly self deprecating!? Number 24 made me laugh!
- James, Fulham, 20/02/2009 16:47
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21. My best friend slept with a famous actor.??
God what a dullard you really are. If you have an ego of such size that you have to publish 25 things about yourself then at least try to have one thing to say. You so think that you're interesting but really ... "I believe people who love cats are the true sensualists."??
Vanity, narcissism, arrogance, egotism ... look them up.
facebook gives everybody the chance to feel so much more important than they are and frankly my dear: you aint.
- Chris, Muswell Hill, 20/02/2009 15:10
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