My offshore (India-based) Facebook Assistant, Ertha, is a great help to me. Every day she accepts whatever friend requests there are for me that morning, unless it’s one of my enemies ‎(she has the list). Every night she selects 10 or 20 people she thinks I might like to be FB friends with, based mostly on how many mutual friends I have with them (10+ is the rule). Then the next day she faxes me the list and we review it together. I give her notes to include with the invites sometimes, like “high school” or “fellow storyteller.”

I also dictate my status updates to her over the phone and she posts them. She ghostwrites many of my replies to comments on my own stuff and my comments on other people’s postings. English is Ertha’s third language, which is why sometimes my comments sound stilted or ungrammatical. That’s alright. I think that adds to the pathos intrigue exoticity of SM Shrake.

She’s really adept at Facebooking. She told me she went to some Indian social-networking trade school where they teach all the ins and outs of these sites.

Ertha and I are working on a way to swipe everyone’s FB passwords so I can post links to my stories on all your walls without having to ask you. Guerilla self-marketing. With a social purpose.

Tags: Exoticity, Facebook, India