These columns are too long. No one knows how to read anything that won't fit on a telephone screen. If it goes on for more than 140 characters, the "reader" will forget what the first word was and have to go back and read it again.

But they won't go back and read it again.

Text is candy. And it has a half life of five minutes.

I am on Friendster, Myspace (myself and both my current and old band) and Facebook.

Friendster died years ago. Killed off by Myspace. I occasionally get badly typed semi-sexual messages probably written by bald men but represented by a young woman showing me the strap of her panties. And they keep using the same picture.

Myspace is the home of millions of bands no one cares about (including mine) who spam the Myspace universe with friend requests that are denied 99% of the time. What was the last band "discovered" on Myspace? Was there a first one?

Posting something on Myspace is kinda like knocking on a million closed doors that will never get opened again.

Facebook still gets regular play from mostly regular people. But it's on the way out. I had a small swirl of attention in the six months before my 20th high school reunion, but that has died down in the months since I didn't attend.

By the way, I was in my high school hometown last week for about a day. I didn't see anyone I knew. Of course, I was mostly in and out of convenience stores (work). But I did eat at Taco Box twice. Remember when we used to hang out at Taco Box?

I tend to post little quips on Facebook maybe once a day (if I have the time). Sometimes people find them funny. Sometimes alarming. And sometimes they show up to see my band. Most of the time they are probably (rightly) ignored.

In a year or so, there will be something supplanting Facebook's hold on our online imagination. You know when corporate interests set up "fan" pages that you aren't hanging out in the hippest of places anymore.

I don't Twitter. I won't Twitter. I don't know anyone who does.

One friend says Twitter is for news people. I wonder why people who get paid for their printed words would limit themselves to such a small platform. Informal polls have shown that the kids aren't Twittering either. So if this has already been taken over by big media and the rest of corporate America, I'm thinking it's gonna be deader than a doornail before Facebook.

My analogy of the moment is this: who hangs out at the same bar for twenty years?

Most people hang out at the bar until they find that special someone (meaning they don't have to hang out at THAT bar anymore).

In other words, no place stays hip forever. Why should an online social network think that everyone will want to haunt their imaginary patent leather booths for the rest of their lives?

We should remember that the Internet as we know it now is barely over a decade old. Remember chat rooms? Remember that AOL was the most important thing ten years ago? Remember Napster?

And all of this "social" crap has made us less in touch than before. In mean actually in touch, as in touching people physically. Sure millions and millions of messages get sent back and forth from people every day, hour, minute, second. But I gotta say, considering the amount of e-mail I get from moveon.org, you'd think they were my best friends. But I don't know them. I'm just too lazy to get taken off the list. Besides, half the time it goes to my spam folder. Glenn Beck is a racist? Tell me something else astounding.

Are you my friend? What are you doing right now? Where do we go from here now that all of the children have grown up?

Matt Worley can go without hearing about your morning coffee.