Pandora left me for the Cheerleader of “Like”

I’m having horrible memories of braces, unrequited love, and that question most kids in their teens have – who “likes” me? Some young buck of a CEO made an announcement,and now I feel I’ve lost my sexy post-graduate community to the commerce of “Like”.   Facebook just turned into High School and I think Pandora is snogging behind my back!

It makes me want to have a drink – the kind only those over 21 can have and review the grown-up facts:

1. Facebook has new policies and they bring up issues of privacy. Though we don’t know how that will play out yet.

2. There is the question if “Like” partners will scale.

3. Finally, there is a question if ANY of what I just mentioned means a thing to ANYONE.

Here’ a good HuffPo post about what the they announced — it talks about how they’re bringing Facebook inside out now…our likes and dislikes can be aggregated outside of Facebook — CNN, Yelp, Pandora and others (right now) can show people what you are “liking” – and then they can sell you stuff. Here’s the link before I start my personal rant: http://huff.to/cdlwhP

Ok, so, I don’t drink that much…so…let me start here…because it’s so totally uncool…

…So, the day after Facebook announced that they were going to move from the “social graph” to the “open graph” my friend walked in to meet me for breakfast with a printout. It had a pretty picture of Pandora and then a picture of my face saying I “liked” one of the songs he had listened to that evening. The song was, to be plain, not one of my better selections. That was embarrassing. But, worse, my boyfriend, my algorithmic hottie, my song seeker, my PANDORA was kissing and telling!

So wrong!

Pandora, I thought you loved me? I’ve been devoted to you – telling you all of my secret desires, my secret crushes, my music! MY MUSIC.

Ok, let’s begin here — Pandora did something so great, first it named itself, “Music Genome Project” which sounds so cool. So, “Blinded me with science” – so, commercial free! And, when I met it I fed it one song – just one – that one secret one I loved and never told anyone – and it found me more like it. So, my Pandora channels are moments of private poetry between me and a search engine that feels like it cares for me, loves me and my taste (without judgement) and has worked day and night to give me more – of what I want.

And, now, it’s cheating on me!

I don’t care what anyone else likes! Let’s be more clear: I don’t care if my ex-boyfriend, ok, he was not a boyfriend, but a high school party means something happened, ok, WHATEVER…I may be “Friended” with him on Facebook. And, I have looked at his pictures of his KIDS…and we may have this really sweet, grown up, sophisticated Facebook friendship. We are grown-ups now. But, on MY Pandora I have a channel that reminds me of that year in the 1980’s and of him and his group of friends; it has those songs in there. I love that channel, it’s private to me – though I will never be sixteen again and that moment in time (that youthful gene in me is gone)….and now, when I go to Pandora, what if it shows me that he no longer loves The Clash – but – say – Sarah Mclachlan.  Do you understand now? Sarah Mclachlan!

I like the woman, she likes animals, she started Lillith Fair…nice Canadian person…but she is soooo earnest….and perhaps I only want to remember a time when people only loved the Clash and not…NICE people music.

What if I know what you “like” now, yet it’s not how we are truly connected? We were connected by beer, and bad decisions, and zits and punk and the emergence of the Beastie Boys, and when the Mud Club was still around, and when my dad would not let me go to CBGB’s and I yelled, “Why not? Why not? You let me go out…” and then I slammed the door…and smoked a cigarette and felt sick.

I am connecting to that, not to a song that you now “like”, one that Pandora has struck a deal with Facebook to share a split on once I buy it. Got me?

And, it’s FINE to try to run a business. But, I have angry feelings — like having your high school love go to College and decide not to be a poet but a lawyer (and I am one to talk, I was trained as a singer and I now sing in the shower, and I really need lawyers for my work…ok…so no dis’ on my friends who lawyered up..) But, seriously, we all have to grow up – yet, must we be told to grow up, money up, get up and out into the world by a kid who is twenty-five years old?

Mark Zuckerberg’s a smart kid. He brought a great infrastructure he built in college to the world. And, it worked. Look at it grow. Though, I really liked it as a world of it’s own. And, yeah, I know, relax and get a life…though, I had gotten comfortable with the personal elements in that weird little FB world: Poke, I dig that, if I didn’t “poke” my friends Cate and Jenn we’d feel totally disconnected. And, then there are the posts from friends that have nothing to do what they like (but about the things they DON’T like – those I value most). And, I dig the personal element of video apps, my dorky events tab, I don’t even mind big brands telling me things on the side of the page…It’s in my world of FB…and, I want this kind of intimate experience in FB because I am getting older, and my friends are far away, and we’ve reorganized our relationships to fit who we are now.

So, thanks Zuck, it’s a nice business model, and good luck with it. Really, I mean it. But, listen to this “MILF” – a little advice – a community is not defined by what it “likes”, nor what it buys, or who-knows-who: it’s how “public” is shifting, how we are taking our insides and hidden longings and choosing to share them with each other. That is the legacy of what you made – you set up a place where we create our own world, when the cold one outside is frightening and getting further from our youth.

So, leave Facebook as it is, please.  Leave it just like I like my community, my friends and my scotch: straight up, full of love (not “like”) and discrete.

Thanks, Zuck. Now, have a drink on me and let me share a painful thing about getting older – you stop thinking about what you “like” and only about what you do, and did, Love.