Facebook friends? No, too much pressure

The e-mails warn me that 14 people are waiting for me. Fourteen people have asked me to be their friend on Facebook and they are still waiting, less and less patiently each week, it seems.

I am disappointing all of them; soon I’ll let down even more. Who knew I could disappoint so many people by doing nothing. Usually I disappoint family or friends by doing something silly or stupid.

I guess before I started getting these e-mails, the advanced technology wasn’t there to let me know how many people I was passively letting down. Before, they could have just fumed silently. But now the e-mails arrive like digital reminders of how bummed out they all are. “Fourteen people have asked you to be their friend on Facebook, sign up today,’’ the last message said before I hit delete.

I may be one of the relatively few people not yet on Facebook. I don’t know how long I can last in this old fogey category but for now, it’s a quieter, pleasant place to be. Still, the pressure is building to join the 300 million others.

This is no holier-than-thou, high-up-on-my-Palomino, I-only-watch-PBS decision. No, this is more practical: I don’t have time for Facebook. I hardly have time for e-mail and websites and phone calls. Adding in Facebook at my age seems overwhelming. And too much incoming.

Yes, I sometimes recommend mixing in a Facebook strategy to a business client; but that’s business, my plight is personal.

When they are calling me on the old-fashioned phone or using decades-old e-mail technology, some of the same 14 friends tell me Facebook is fun. You’ll love it once you try it, they say. Sounds sort of like the sushi I shunned for years and now eat twice a week. You can find lots of people you know on Facebook, they tell me. I find lots of people I know on the Greenbush Line every day, why do I need Facebook?

But, it’s what’s happening now, e-mail is so last century, they claim with sincerity. If I wanted to be so right now I would have leapfrogged to Twitter already, leaving my 14 friends behind in the dust. Twitter, too, seems too daunting, too much time.

So, I disappoint my wannabe Facebook friends. But, I return my real-life friends’ phone calls and e-mails. At least I don’t disappoint them, too, when they reach out that way. I couldn’t take that much pressure.

Larry Carpman is president of Carpman Communications, a Boston strategic communications firm.