What's on Your Mind

[ShiftyNJ]

Quick backstory. I only have one Facebook account, although I use it both for personal stuff and promotional. As such, I have a bunch of "Facebook friends" that I literally don't know from Adam. This is about one such FB friend.

I first noticed him popping up in my feed about two months ago, saying he was "deep in training for his upcoming UFC bout". I thought "huh, that's weird - I have a UFC fighter as a FB friend". I didn't give it much more thought than that.

The bout happened about a month ago. And apparently, he knocked the guy out in fairly short order. My feed was then overrun with photos of him standing over this bloody guy and whatnot. (Apparently, we have FB friends in common, and they would repost the photos.) Not exactly my cup of oolong, but the photos weren't overly graphic, and they were easily skipped.

This was followed by posts from him of a weirdly motivational nature. "Go live your dream", "don't let anybody tell you you can't", "listen to your inner voice and live the life you want to live". Pretty good advice, really, although a bit bewildering latching it onto what he actually did. "I beat the living shit out of a guy in a cage, so don't let anybody hold you back!"

But then came...well, what's happening now. Facebook invites. Not to his next UFC match (which I'd politely decline), but to kickstarter campaigns and fundraising events at bars. What's he raising money for? "To offset the outrageous cost of UFC fighting camp".

I'm kind of irked by that. The underlying message seems to be "Go live your dream...but underwrite mine".

Lex

I don't blame you. I have a few of those folks "entrepreneurs" who are constantly getting involved with hit-up-your-friends sales schemes, be it for cookware, jewelry, diet wotsit, and the like. Often they are the relations of someone I'm actually friends with, and thus the drama of "unfriending" is unappealing. There is the wonderful "stop following" feature, of which they will be unaware, and -- since Facebook arbitrarily decides what you do/don't see anyway -- you can always blame that if they ask you if you've seen something specific.