Things that are on the Internet

-Two very different takes on male-female friendship, to be read side by side.

-Food. A serious or frivolous topic, depending whether it's being taken on by a man or a woman. (If the man happens to be a "right-leaning economist," where to begin?) Frank Bruni just kind of goes along with it.

-John Derbyshire crossed the line. And it wasn't even by expressing a sexual interest in 15-year-olds.

-Dan Savage asks us to remember that the War on Women is also a War on Men, what with contraception and abortion being issues that imply the active participation of both sexes, and what with the branch of social conservatism (where extreme-left and extreme-right meet) that has it in for pornography.

-What with the persistent motif of parents airing their kids' dirty laundry, how did I forget to include the now-notorious "Vogue mom" who put her seven-year-old daughter on a diet, then wrote an article and now a book about it? Perhaps because this can be filed under things that are not on the Internet - Vogue likes to keep its articles for subscribers only, such that you need a 600-page book of ads for designer clothes next to your toilet if you're ever going to hear the mom's side in full, and I don't have this. I mean, I'm sure the full text could be found, but this topic is, as they say, so last season. But yeah, that's pretty bad, arguably worse than the myriad women, hiding behind maiden names, telling us that they've kinda-sorta come around to the fact that their otherwise functional sons are dull and dimwitted.

-I understand enough about Facebook to get that there are settings such that you can make certain content visible only to some people. I get how this works on Google+, and think this might have actually been the point of Google+, but don't use Google+. My own approach to Facebook is to put zilch on it that's more private than what's on WWPD - saves me the trouble of figuring out Facebook's ever-changing privacy settings, plus I'm sufficiently ancient as to only feel comfortable having genuinely private conversations in person or over the phone. I never feel tempted to spill online, so it doesn't quite constitute self-censorship.

I will, however, limit what I'm reading there. If I'm getting too many updates about someone's band, or if someone embraces a political cause, religious fervor, or intensive weight-loss regimin and uses Facebook to provide minute-by-minute updates, I'll hide those updates. Occasionally, and only in the case of people I'm not currently living near or in school with, and typically in the case of people I don't remember having met, I'll remove. (Sorry, sorority sister from Birthright whose identity I remembered after pressing delete, on the absolutely microscopic off-chance you noticed the loss of one of your 4,000 friends, it was nothing personal.)

But the whole thing where you let in your inner circle on this, your slightly broader circle on that, and have some whole category of people you are so kind you must friend, who would be so devastated if you didn't add them, so you add them even though you dislike them, but god forbid they should see whatever incredibly exciting things the people you actually like are let in on, this I've never attempted. But I feel as though this is something one ought to do, to give off the impression of having an incredibly exciting hidden life. Of course, because you can't readily know who's hiding info and who (eep) just isn't putting much on there in the first place, perhaps the mystique thing is covered after all.