I was poking around Google Reader when I found a recommended six-month-old blog post by Google engineer Mark Chu-Carroll on why he will not be attending his high school reunion:
... it's twenty five years since I got out of that miserable fucking hell-hole. And people from my high school class are suddenly getting in touch, sending me email, trying to friend me on Facebook, and trying to convince me to bring my family to the reunion. (It's a picnic reunion, full family invited.) Even some of the people who used to beat the crap out of me on a regular basis are getting in touch as if we're old friends. ...
Stay the fuck away from me. I don't want to hear about your lives. I don't want to know how you've changed since high school. I don't want to hear about your jobs, your spouses, your children. I've got a good life now, and I cannot imagine a reason in the world why I would pollute that world with contact with any of you.
Chu-Carroll describes in his post and subsequent comments how his fingers were broken by a bully and a swastika was once burned into his lawn while he attended a suburban New Jersey high school in the '80s. He received hundreds of responses to his post, including one that recommended an appropriate song by the Australian singer Kate Miller-Heidke:
The song's titled "Are You F*cking Kidding Me? (Facebook Song)," and you can hear a better audio version on her iLike page. I think my favorite genre of music is antisocial piano rock. Last fall, Miller-Heidke toured the U.S. as the opening act for the master of the form, Ben Folds.