I Apologize For Nothing!

Nothing gives me greater joy than denying someone's friend request on MySpace.

I get maybe 5 friend requests a day, usually from some band, or some singer or some tarted-up German teenager who wants to be my friend and then tell me about all the cool ways to make money while online.

I relish each opportunity I get to press deny and see the request vanish. I know that these bands and singers and German ad-whores send out mass friend requests just trying to get as many people as possible exposed to whatever it is they do. But I like to think that maybe, just maybe, one in every 7 gets personally offended when I deny them. Like maybe the lead singer of Dark Heartbeats, or whatever retarculous band out of Omaha friend requested me this morning, has seen that I have not been counted among their friends and is devastated:

"I don't understand! Did we tell her that we had a hip new sound? Didn't she see all the other people that were 'thanking us for the add'? We specifically put Genesis in the 'sounds like' and the 'influences' section, to prove to her that we are right up her alley!! What went wrong?!?! What's wrong with us?!?! With me?!?!?.......Maybe Dark Heartbeats isn't going to be the greatest band in the world........"

And then, in my imagination, this lead singer (who of course is named something ludicrous like Sebastian St. Glory) falls into an immeasurable depression. No one can get him out of the bathtub, he refuses to eat, and eventually he starts cutting himself. Meanwhile, the rest of the band members start to lose their focus and question the future of the band. One by one, without St. Glory's leadership, they all abandon their instruments and their dreams of fame and fortune, and they go back to their jobs and their ex-girlfriends. And Dark Heartbeats quietly....ever so quietly....abandons the dream....

And thus, the world is spared the horror of another pretentious and self-aggrandizing garage band with feelings. And there will be a few less songs on the radio titled "My Personal Freedom" and "My Parents Didn't Get Me, And That's Why I Wear So Much Eyeliner Now" and "Girl, I Wanna Be Your Rock". And because songs like that are inherently asinine, we'll all be better people because they never existed.

And all because I get a smug if not fleeting sense of superiority when I select "Deny" on my friend requests.

You're welcome.