Have you examined lately what your friends have done to your life?

The premise: Facebook now rivals e-mail as the easiest way to communicate electronically with many people.  Among my friends — and I’m talking about people with whom I want to make plans regularly — a Facebook message will get a faster response than an e-mail.  This requires people to spend relatively large amounts of time on the site.

Clearly, spending that much time on Facebook lures a people to drink from their own stream of consciousness.  We’re treated to their momentary obsessions and fleeting thoughts searching for the quickest exit (in this case, through the fingers).   In the end, you get a whole bunch of nothing and scores of people who “like” it.  There are a lot of people seeking approval out there and as many others willing to give it.

I took action last month.  I instituted a policy to ban (later amended simply to “hide”) people who post random song lyrics as status updates.  I’ve already hidden three people.  I would hide everybody and use Facebook only as an elaborate e-mail, chat and event-management service, but it’s sometimes fun to look through the list of friends and see who has the least to say.   It gives me something fresh to talk about behind their backs.

The status update has become, perhaps, the lowest form of communication (lower than the T-shirt).  It’s worthless.  Your friends are wasting your time.  Don’t just sit there and take it.

I have revisited the show “Strangers with Candy” in the past few weeks.  I was a fan when it first aired about 10 years ago, and the episodes are fun to pull out and watch every few years.

It’s a show that’s full of boundary-jumping, wide-open, blatant crassness — and the returns are diminishing as I get older.  It’s still funny, but I mostly enjoy watching it now with people who haven’t seen it before and delighting in their shocked laughter.

When I was 20, a gasp was as good as a laugh.  At 30, I prefer the laugh.