Makin’ Bacon: Part 3: Livestock On Social Media

I was regretting my decision to expand my homestead activities by ordering up piglets. I was no more prepared to care for a pig than I would be for a rhinocerous. Meanwhile Mrs. Curmudgeon fired up the time sink of doom otherwise known as Facebook. Up popped an image of a litter of pigs.

I paused. “Um, what’s with the critters on Facebook?”

“They’re our pigs.” Mrs. Curmudgeon smiled; clicking through several photos. She was still chatting on the phone with the Foxinator.

“Pigs…” I muttered. I was suddenly feeling very obsolete.

“Oh the little spotted one is extra cute.” She declared. I can’t deny that ‘cute’ is a valued contributor to the decision making process. The cute one got put on our list. The next one was apparently not cute and therefore skipped. Loser!

I can roll with this. No man should complain about a pig being ‘cute’ if he can emote that a 1950’s Buick tailfin is ‘sexy’.

Cute is fine, it’s the concept of livestock on Facebook that bothered me. I’ve got an attitude about Facebook. Facebook (in my humble opinion) is as desirable as lite beer, socialist university professors, hashtag weenies, or resurgent measles. All are undeniable facts of life in the early 21st century. Humanity could have avoided any of them given greater collective wisdom. Facebook will someday fade. Like leeches in medicine and Tab soda, it will someday seem weird and tasteless. I may be the only person on earth with this theory. This doesn’t make me wrong.

Facebook also short circuits time honored traditional social limits to gossip and busybodying. Before Facebook, someone who was going to get all up in my business had to show some damn dedication. For one thing they had to actually be present to act inappropriately on a local scale. Kooks and lurkers in past decades would have to leer at a window or stalk around parking lots. Activities which underscore the unseemly nature of their interest and can be stopped (at least in my experience) with a crooked smile and a few words. “I’m a forgiving man so I’m going to give you give you three steps before I…” See? Stalking in the old days could be handled “manually”. This is why older generations, no less nosy than the current, at least pretended to keep to themselves. As for sharing information, gossip with the nearest bored housewife was excruciatingly inefficient. Every tidbit and detail came at the price of boring stories about grandkids and gout. Who has time for that? Before Facebook, someone wanting to pay too much attention to me had to get their hands dirty, live near me, waste lots of time, and risk getting their teeth kicked in. Facebook ruined that. How am I to shout “get off my lawn” on Facebook?

Why would a pig be on Facebook?

“Pigs…” I stuttered, “Do not employ social media.”

“Look for yourself.”

I looked. Livestock. On Facebook. Livestock on Facebook can’t be good.

There was the Foxinator, holding a tiny critter. Less than a day old. Smiling for the camera. Both of them. Piglets, apparently, can smile.

“Is that…” I groped for the term. “…is that a ‘selfie’?” (Before Obama went to a funeral in South Africa I didn’t know the word “selfie”. I wish I could unlearn that bit of knowledge.)

I heard Foxinator laughing on the phone. Mrs. Curmudgeon agreed. Men are idiots.

I have reservations over any pig that’s been an Internet star. Call me a dinosaur or a moron but it is not good that livestock be on social media. Not good at all.

I’m just sayin’.