I am now an Admin of the CMB, having previously been a worthless minion under the administratorship of son No. 2.  The CMB turns up (annoyingly very probably) in the Facebook news feeds of 36 loyal followers (used to be 39 – in which case 3 of you, like rats, have deserted this sinking ship.)   How do I know the CMB has 36 loyal followers?  (I’m laying great emphasis on the ‘loyal’ bit here, hoping that if I repeat it enough times you will begin to feel burdened by a sense of blog-based loyalty.)  I know because, as Admin, I get to see my blog’s Facebook page in the right hand top corner of my news feed.

Fine and dandy you might think.  My little sunflower pops up every day and underneath this image, nicked from Google, I get a quick rundown of my impressive stats.  Today I see that, during the course of this past week, my last post ‘reached’ 22 interested parties and the grand sum total of two of those parties actually engaged with what I had to say.  Some time ago I noticed that Facebook advised clicking on those stats so I could see a more detailed breakdown.  I looked at that more detailed breakdown, which caused instant blog-induced depression, and vowed never to look again – until today.

For you see, my Facebook blog page has recently taken to haranguing its owner.  How can this possibly be?  How can it be that a CPU, hard drive, RAM and motherboard (courtesy ‘Computers’ – howstuffworks.com) is in possession of the ability to bully and emotionally blackmail the superior human intelligence (me) at the keyboard?  –  (I’m ignoring the imagined raucous laughter, concerning my IQ level, coming through the internet ether from my two loyal fans.)

Yesterday my CMB Facebook page informed me that:  ‘You haven’t posted in 5 days – your readers are waiting.  WRITE A POST’   After suppressing my own raucous laughter at the fact that a) Facebook thinks I have readers and b) that those readers are glued to their keyboards just waiting for my next riveting post – I began to feel slightly miffed at the authoritarian tone the almighty Facebook was taking.

Today my message was: ‘You haven’t posted in 5 days.  People who like Charlie’s Mum’s Blog haven’t heard from you in a while.  WRITE A POST  (and furthermore, Ve haf vays of making you write Schweinhund.)  (I made that last bit up and surely we’re now on to day 6?) 

Now, I like to think I’m immune to the power of social media (and social media is powerful whether you like it or not) but it appears I’ve been kidding myself all along because my heart skipped a few tiny, anxiety ridden beats at the words WRITE A POST.   True, I succumbed to stupid Facebook only a couple of years ago……I know this because Facebook told me.  Apparently I became friends with one of my very first friends two years ago.  Facebook suggested, in a gentler authoritarian tone this time around, that I celebrate this fact.  I’m not sure how I was supposed to celebrate.  Throw a 2 year anniversary party at which I and the friend are the only attendees?   – actually that’s the kind of low in numbers, very quiet party I go in for.

My immunity to all things Facebook happily includes the swathes of NHS posts, the torrent of Christian-based posts, the  plethora of political agenda posts, but when my own blog page starts pointing the finger then I suddenly come all over faint and giddy-like, losing all this self-inoculated immunity.  How does Big Brother Facebook even know I haven’t posted in 5 days?   In a state of blogging panic I rushed over to the CMB’s admin page and the CMB’s detailed Facebook stats.

There I discovered, through rapid analysis of my posting history, that I have been publishing a post roughly every 5 days on the blog that no one reads.   Wow, that seems like a prolific output, considering an average post takes hours to write, research and edit (this one didn’t) and I know;  there’s very little to show for it all in the brain-draining end.  So, those massive CPUs in California had worked out, through various computerly algorithms, codes and suchlike, that the owner of the anonymous and miniscule CMB has a habit of posting every 5 days, and decided to use that information AGAINST ME.

Because, even though nobody out there is waiting with baited breath for my next post, I now feel the heavy burden of having to post every 5 days – because Fascist Facebook told me to.

That’s the power of your average teeny-tiny microchip right there.  Those monolithic, Facebook servers can affect my psychological well-being, as though they are ALIVE; which in a good few years they very probably will be.

So, my own personal, Facebook, mini-Hitler microchip has demanded I post – because my 5 days are up.

And here it is.  Worth waiting for wasn’t it?  And I posted on DAY 6.

In your face, Facebook.