Mary Novaria

Credit: someecards.com Facebook’s “people you may know” feature is alternatingly annoying and creepy. The SOTFs (Same Old Tired Faces) dance across my screen daily, urging me to send “friend requests” to people with whom I have little in common, have never heard of or, in some cases, have made a point of not engaging. Yes, I know “Frank” and I have 59 mutual friends, so Facebook figures we must know each other. But we don’t. Never met him in person or online. As far as I can tell, we’ve never even commented on the same posts. Not friending Frank. “Gigi” and I have 20 mutual friends. I’ve known her casually for 15 years or so and we’ve always been friendly. She’s a person I could run into and have a quick, pleasant chat but we’ve never made lunch dates, exchanged birthday cards or dished over the phone. Zuckerberg is dying for us to become Facebook friends. But if Gigi keeps popping up on my “people you may know” list, I’d guess I’m popping on hers, as well. So why fo...

Addiction has become a spectator sport. I’m not a big fan of that. Our culture’s fascination, make that obsession, with celebrity and notoriety has, perhaps, become an addiction as well, and we want more, more, more. More gossip, more dirt, more photos. As our tech capabilities expand, so do our appetites. Our society’s collective and compulsive hunger requires cannibalistic feeding on the bloody mess our so-called idols and stars have made of their lives. We want this so badly that we turn murder supects into overnight celebrities, devoting hours and days and months of coverage to them--especially if they are young, attractive, white women who are charged with killing their children. We want this so badly that we lap up derogatory and a disrespectful monikers like "Octomom." For some of us, in fact for many of us, journalism was once a noble profession. Right now (thank you so very much News Corp), journalists are in the news, breaking laws in order to break a story. Lurki...