I have deleted my FriendFeed account. I’ve told myself that there was no reason I could ever do that—nothing anything could say or do that would so piss me off that I thought I would be better off without that circle of friends. And friends we are: we’ve consoled each other over the deaths of our mutual friends. We’ve shared births and weddings and new jobs and losing jobs and strange holidays that we’ve never heard of before. And yet, in spite of that, there are people there who take absolute joy in being a troll: in finding something personal that they can attack and ridicule. They like the attention, I suppose.

FriendFeed was like a comfortable pub. I could show up any time of the day or night and find people that I liked, who liked me, and who would have something interesting to discuss. Imagine visiting that pub for years, growing comfortable, watching new people come and old ones die or merely fade away. Imagine showing up one day to find that every person you knew had decided to humiliate you by attacking the things you hold most dear—your home. Imagine hearing them carry on and on about how awful a place it is, how stupid the people are there, and how they don’t really understand it, but they really hate that place.

Would you come back? Is that the sort of place where you want to find your friends? Guess what, my “friends?” I shop at Wal-mart. My family shops at Wal-mart. They mostly vote Republican. They worship Jesus Christ and don’t fully understand foreign cultures, though they’re open and friendly and loving, especially once you get to know them. They like country music and bass fishing and they don’t like pretentious assholes from other states telling them how they should spend their money. They read Reader’s Digest and Shakespeare and ancient Greek. Some of them drive Priuses and others drive big, gas-hogging SUVs because that’s what they need to pull their boat or simply to protect their loved ones in a crash.

I’m torn between two worlds, having grown up in the deepest parts of east Texas, and living now in Silicon Valley. I’ve also lived in Ascot, England, and worked in Wuppertal, Germany. Fundamentally, “my people” are not all that different than those of you who like to poke fun at them. One of the few differences is that they teach their children manners. When I visit Texas, the children there, with few exceptions, say “Yes, Sir,” and “No, Sir,” and “Hello, Mr. Campbell.” In pretentious, sophisticated, highly-educated Silicon Valley, the sixth-graders that my wife teaches call her “Stupid,” “Dumbo,” and a “Crack Whore.” When asked to remove their hoods in class, they say, “Why don’t you make me?” It’s obvious when those manners carry over into their online lives.

I’m tired of the pretense. I’m tired of the holier-than-thou attitudes, the disrespectful, hateful “conversations.” I’m tired of trying to walk a middle group, trying to get people to see each other’s points of view. I’m just tired.

I don’t want to cut all ties with my friends. I want to hear about Akiva & Rochelle’s next baby; I want to find out what’s going to happen with Scott and Mary Carmen; I want to hear the next tune from Josh Haley, and I want to see if Marissa makes better decisions than my son, who’s also a freshman in college. But you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t hang out there much any more.

Maybe someday I’ll return, but right now it’s not the sort of place I want to be associated with.