I spit on YourSpace. Ptooey.

Saying "fair point," a faithful reader sent me this excerpt from an interview Tom Wolfe gave earlier this year:

Mr. Wolfe says he has "no theoretical bias against any of it," but still, he seems to find our relentless digital pitch rather cretinous. "Using the Internet is the modern form of knitting," he continues. "It's something to do with idle hands. When you knitted, though, you actually had something to show for it at the end. Thomas Jefferson used to answer all his mail from the day before as soon as he got up at dawn. In his position, think of the number of emails he'd have had. He never would have been Thomas Jefferson if he'd been scrupulous about answering all these things. I think email is a wonderful time-waster. It's peerless. Here it is," he concludes, "you can establish contact--useless contact--with innumerable human beings."

TOTALLY.

This is exactly why I've never been enthralled with the Friendster/LinkedIn/Tribe/Ryze/MySpace phenomena. When these things first started launching I kept getting messages and having weird interactions at cocktail parties where people would look at me as if I were an alien because I hadn't "linked in" yet: "Oh my god! You're not on Friendster?! How can you not be???" At the time, I was living in Washington, D.C., a place where people become particularly aghast when you tell them you have no interest in networking with them or their people.

"Because it would be a huge waste of time, and I don't have that time," was my standard answer. Sometimes I'd mix it up: "I already have enough friends who I have enough trouble keeping up with. Why the hell would I want more?" Or sometimes the simplest answer seemed best: "I don't like people. Leave me alone."

The best answer I've heard from another "social networking" denier was, "Um, because I'm not 12."

Full disclosure: On invitation only, I did sign up for LinkedIn, to see who else might be on it, because one of my closer friends had invited me. To this day, I've gained nothing from that effort. I also created logins for Friendster and MySpace -- Friendster, to check out the photographs of someone a friend of mine thought was "hot," and MySpace to check out the photographs of someone I thought was "hot." But in each case, I checked in maybe twice before logging off forever and going on to forget all my usernames and passwords. (And no, I didn't write the usernames and passwords down, because I knew I'd probably find the services useless anyway.)

Don't get me wrong: Now that I have the Internet and e-mail, I don't know how I'd get along without them. I love writing and receiving real-for-sure paper letters, but come on -- who has the time these days? And who can write a proper letter without getting horrendous writer's cramp? You've got to really want to write that letter.

I do not, however, use the Internet just to whittle away the hours. Besides needing it for e-mail, I use it to read The Latest in News and Opinion, and for research -- research of facts, research on how to spell something, research on what the hell that dude in the band was singing the other night because I couldn't freakin' hear it over the bass line. And, okay, I do spend the teeniest fraction of my day perusing the latest in cuteness.

But I don't understand people who sign up for these sites to accumulate 250 friends, some of them acquaintances at best but most of them totally random and anonymous connections. Even if the people you're communicating with on MySpace are people you know in real life, why do you need to do it on MySpace? There's this amazing new invention. Maybe you've heard of it? It's called e-mail?

I'm not counting the use of these services as business conduits; by all accounts these sites are great ways for bands, authors, actors and whatnot to publicize their mad skillz. (And I suppose I'm not counting it for people who use the sites solely to meet strangers for sex -- of course, needs are needs.)

But for the bazillions of other people who sign on and then get listed as faux friends of obscure people they will most likely never meet in real life? Good god, folks, what is the purpose? There are so many other worthwhile ways to stay entertained: books to read, galleries to visit, parks to play in, movies to see, instruments to tickle and pluck and strum (not to mention other "instruments" to tickle and pluck and strum), songs to sing, classes to take and, not least, real f'n people in the real f'n world to have an f'n cocktail with.

Really.

So yeah, I am so not cool because I so do not have 250 "friends" in my network. Oh my god, I am, like, too sad to live.