Merlin's Frequently Asked Questions > Merlin, Connectedness, and the So-Called Social Graph > Why don't you [follow | friend | stalk | tumbl | $verb] me on [$site]?
Again, it’s so nothing against you. Not at all.
It’s just that I don’t use websites to confer friendship—let alone the illusion of friendship. I use actual friendship for friendship. Elegant, eh?
Here’s the thing: there’s no way I could pay attention to everything in the world that everyone would like me to pay attention to every day, and I’d feel like even more of a jerk if I tried to pretend that I do. I simply can’t understand why anyone would take pride in trying to make that circus work.
Please, friend, please: never allow your self-esteem or self-worth to be gauged by whether you appear on a list on some website. A website is a box of information with a cable attached to it, and it’s incapable of “liking” or “not liking” anyone. Even you. It’s just a box. You are not a box.
I really hope you enjoy things I do and make—I truly, sincerely do—but I also really hope you can understand and respect why it’s important to me not to act like a giant phony, simply because it scales.