Last week over a lovely late -night whiskey I looked at my Facebook page. I never did spend a lot of time there on-line because I understand the limitations of it all. On occasion I have posted things I think the world might want to see and in which they might have an interest. It was mostly family things I put on my page rather than trying to change the world. My Facebook postings are generally things about how my own life is going and how the world is spinning. There are some postings about family and some about my surroundings with lots of pictures. There are also some thoughts on what I sometimes call The Passing Parade. That is known in some circles as “the walk of life”. When I sat quietly at my computer last week and looked at my page there came an understanding that how I presented myself to the world, while not exactly a lie, certainly was an edited version of me.

That is right word for online versions of ourselves. It is an “edited” depiction. For instance, all the photographs I use are carefully chosen. You won’t see shots of me fighting a cold with a runny nose and uncombed hair and there won’t be pictures of me spilling gravy on my shirt. There will certainly be no moments of quarrels between me and the missus on-line. They won’t see the light of day. My achievements, such as they are, are presented for your consideration. My failures, well they aren’t presented at all.

The world in which I live is chronicled as a place of great order and happiness where there are no beer tins in the woods and no pieces of old lumber lying around my garden. That garden I show in the pictures always is neatly mowed in summer. No signs of the millions of dandelions that actually thrive there every spring will appear. You won’t see our old rusty barbeque left out uncovered through the winter. I will spare you that. Nor will you find any picture of last December’s Christmas tree that was shoved up behind our shed in mid-January. It is still there this May with bits of tinsel still clinging bravely to now bare branches.

This is not said that “my page” is a complete fiction but if you think you might know me from reading my on-line presence you will be led astray. It is me putting my best foot forward. It is like those profiles that have been done that ask what books you are reading. People will answer War and Peace or some Churchill biography when the real answer is probably something like Resort Tarts or Nuns on Wheels Gone Wild. A couple of decades ago I did one of the “Twenty Questions” things for the Telegram. I look at it now and I seem really interesting because they sent me the questions in advance, so I had a chance to edit myself. That is where Facebook is today. The edited self.

My page online makes me appear “interesting” as a person. I am far more interesting there then I am in the real world. That isn’t a sin or anything like it, but I do remind myself that everything I post to Facebook adds to a view of me that in the end isn’t really me at all.

Having said all of that, I am still a pretty good guy, I think. At least that is my hope.

You can contact Jim Furlong at jfurlong@ntv.ca