Update: Facebook caved, fixed it. Let the experts do the magic realism, please.
Facebook decides to try its hand at magic realism. If cool people like Salman Rushdie can play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, why shouldn’t Facebook do likewise? And how better to do that than by playing silly buggers with the identity of Salman Rushdie himself?
So what Facebook does is, it de-activates Salman Rushdie’s Facebook account on the grounds that it (Facebook) thinks it’s an impostor. That’s a very silly claim, because if Facebook had taken the trouble to read a few posts and comments it would have seen that it wasn’t. But then it wouldn’t have been able to play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, so it didn’t.
What it did instead was – here’s where its wit and playfulness become apparent – it told Salman Rushdie he could have his ol’ account back, re-activated, but he would have to stop calling himself Salman and call himself Ahmed, instead. World-famous Booker of Bookers-winning Ahmed Rushdie.
That’s a thigh-slapper, don’t you think?
And that sure is what Facebook is for – making its users stop using their own names and start using new ones that they’ve never used, so that nobody will be able to find them or have a clue who the fuck they are.
All very amusing except that Salman is going to quit Facebook in disgust, and he tells good jokes there, so that would be bad. I’ve been shouting at Facebook.