In which he suspects something is awry with Facebook

FacebookI have been telling a friend of mine for a few weeks now that I do not “like” Zoosk, the internet dating site. He’s not the only one who questioned why that news appeared in his Facebook feed. It’s even more annoying because I’m quite happily married, which is — of course — why people keep asking me why I like a dating site.

And so it was with some intrigue that I clicked on a link I saw on Twitter this morning. Tim Carmody retweeted Clive Thompson who linked to an article at readwrite.com titled Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook?

I assure you: I never liked Zoosk.

At first, like others, I thought perhaps there was some way — as hard as it would be for me to believe, because I am painfully attentive to this kind of thing — that I might have accidentally “liked” Zoosk while trying to dismiss an ad or flicking through my feed on my iPhone. But that’s really a tough sell for me. And to learn that people who are dead are liking things on Facebook… Well…

I really hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but as Douglas Adams wrote in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, one of my all-time favorite books:

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, my friends.

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