Technically Incorrect

I have often wondered if being a divorce lawyer makes you feel better about humanity or worse. Perhaps it merely keeps you in intimate contact with all the pitfalls of relationships on a daily, even hourly, basis.

Still, whose heart could possibly lose so much as a throb on hearing that almost one in five divorces in the UK are fueled by Facebook?

No, it's not that Facebook's employees are so irresistible that anyone who comes into contact with them, even in the UK, immediately leaves their spouse. Rather, it seems that the constant lack of trust in marriages causes much trawling around spouses' Facebook pages until one party decides the party's over.

It has already been established by one study that Facebook turns lovers a painful shade of green. However, the Telegraph quotes a law firm declaring that almost one in five divorce petitions make Facebook the scene of the crime.

The managing director of Divorce-Online told the Telegraph: "I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was. I was really surprised to see 20 percent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook."

Facebook is the home of love, surely.

(Credit: CC Sabrina Campagna/Flickr)

Some of the biggest culprits, according to the Telegraph, are flirty e-mails and messages found on Facebook, which are "increasingly being cited as evidence of unreasonable behavior."

And it was only in February that Emma Brady discovered her husband was divorcing her when he updated his Facebook status to: "Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady."

Are people who leave themselves so exposed on Facebook merely careless? Or does the liberating new medium of social networking allow them to deliberately tell their spouses that they have had enough without having the courage to look them in the eyes?

Perhaps, though, Facebook might use this phenomenon to advertise its own power. The site should create a special group: the Facebook Disconnects group. It would bring together all those whose marriages that ended because of wall posts and the like, thereby showing how Facebook relationships are more powerful than any out there in the dumb ole' analog, touchy-feely world.

That way, advertisers might finally realize that it's better to put all of their money into digital relationships on Facebook rather than into those quaintly ancient TV spots.

In these modern times, when people hear the word "beard," they sometimes think of someone being used, perhaps unknowingly, to cover up the sexual orientation of a friend.

However, once anyone under 20 sees this series of public-service announcements from LG, in which James Lipton from "Inside the Actor's Studio" attempts to be a good companion to troubled teens, they will, hopefully, think "beard" before sending a text featuring a picture of their private parts.

You see, LG did a little research and discovered that nasty or sexually explicit texts weren't being sent so much by bullies, but by "tabloid teens." You know, those who might have helped Yahoo's business enormously by trying to find every last piece of information about Tiger Woods' alleged missteps with various misses.

Such teens believe that gossip is their source of influence and social power, but it doesn't necessarily yield the finest of results. Which is why LG would like the rapidly typing youth to "give it a ponder" before they send, as Lipton so sweetly describes it in one of the spots, "a pic of your junk."

In an attempt to help, Lipton gives them his beard for them to stroke. On their own faces, you understand.

The spots have a tough task, as they are asking kids to don Lipton's famously ephemeral facial hair in order to adopt a little temporary maturity at a moment of some excitement.

But LG is still determined to knock a little sense into these people wherever it can get to them.

The rather lovely Give It A Ponder Facebook page has delightful entries from, for example, a lady called Lynn Hood who says, "Oh, that I had a beard this magnificent to stroke while I ponder." And, the GiveItAPonder.com site offers even more amusement.

U.S. teens together apparently send 20,000 texts per second, so one can only hope that this delightful campaign puts at least a tiny dent into their craniums.

Once it makes some intelligent inroads with teens, perhaps LG might try to influence the poor judgment of politicians. Perhaps, indeed, LG could get the folks on Capitol Hill to text us their thoughts and receive our approval before they ever articulate a single word in public. Just a thought.

You know that apocalypse thing we're always being told might be just around the corner? Well, do you feel the chilling breeze? Do you feel the troubled twittering in the trees?

For here is a tale that I know you will discuss with your loved ones, perhaps with other people's loved ones, even with your psychological professional, the minute you hear it.

It appears a man called Dana Hanna is standing at the altar on November 21. He utters those most solemn vows about how he will love and obey or whatever it is that married people claim to do these days.

The officiant pronounces that Dana and his lovely bride, Tracy, are now married. Does Dana weep? Does he kiss his bride?

Ah, no. For Dana's Twitter moniker is TheSoftwareJedi and his first loyalty is to his digital followers. So, much to his wife's surprise, he whips out his cell phone and updates his statuses on both Twitter and Facebook. Right there at the altar. He also hands his wife's cell phone over to her.

Now that he has uploaded the evidence (which we're assuming isn't staged), Dana insists that this was all done for fun.

Indeed, he explained on YouTube: "I have a lot of family scattered around the country and we all use Facebook a lot to keep in touch. So when Tracy and I were engaged, most of my family found out via Facebook because we updated our statuses."

If you're wondering what it is he tweeted from the altar, here it is: "Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride. #weddingday"

However, another tweet sent on Monday night by Hanna, who is chief architect of NextDayPets.com and president of Torian Technologies, might perhaps offer an even greater insight into his complex and socially networked psyche: "Just changed over the laundry for @TracyPage and was thrown off by the fact a bra was in there. Not used to living with a woman again."

Oh, Tracy, are you sure about this? I only ask because I just tried to access the Tracy Page Twitter feed and received the message "this page doesn't exist."

As you begin to contemplate your Thanksgiving meal, your family gathered around you, your loved ones embracing you, please be thankful you are not Sal9000.

Sal appears to be a man with very idiosyncratic needs, which he has attempted to satiate by marrying his favorite video game character.

Perhaps you think I have finally lost my last marble. However, please examine this footage. Courtesy of the radical realists at BoingBoing, this video shows that Sal married Nene Anegasaki, a character in the Nintendo DS game, Love Plus.

These unique nuptials were apparently broadcast on the Japanese video sharing site, Nico Nico Douga, a place where many strange things occur for, no doubt, extremely sound psychological reasons.

I don't wish to so much as broach the topic of marital consummation. However, I can tell you that attending the wedding, which was held, naturally, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, were the bride's virtual video game girlfriend, a live audience and, yes, a real religious priest.

I cannot find record of where the happy couple might be honeymooning, but I have an indelible fear that it might be in a very small, dark apartment somewhere in Tokyo. I trust they will have a large and healthy family.

It's easily done, that slide into the Facebook face-plant.

You casually slip onto your lover's Facebook page and see that his or her status has been changed from "in a relationship" to "single."

Perhaps you'd had a fight. Perhaps he or she was pressing you for a commitment, a press that you responded to with the wrong words or the wrong tone. Or perhaps you saw that your lover seemed to have a new special friend, one who delighted in commenting on every one of your lover's new photos.

Suddenly, there it all is: love destroyed by a few strokes, not of another's body but rather of a keyboard.

If that woman on Facebook is more than a friend, I'll spike her with my head.

(Credit: CC Lord Khan/Flickr)

Some social psychologists at the University of Guelph in Ontario would like you to know that they can prove that your heartbreak is largely Facebook's fault, or rather that the fault lies in the fact that Facebook exists. After a little research, the wise brains penned a study entitled "More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy?"

And in their minds was the question of whether the social-networking thing enhances lovers' relationships or perhaps tugs at their essentially brittle strings, unraveling them like a cheap sundress.

It seems to be the latter. In preliminary findings, published in CyberPsychology and Behavior, the researchers found grim tales of lovers torn asunder.

Look, for example, at these words of woe from one Facebooker. Referring to his lover, he says, "I have enough confidence in her to know my partner is faithful, yet I can't help but second-guess myself when someone posts on her wall...It can contribute to feelings of you not really 'knowing' your partner."

The researchers put it so knowingly: "Ambiguous scenes involving a partner and contact with past romantic and sexual partners are among the common triggers of jealousy in romantic relationships, and these ambiguous scenes are a regular occurrence on Facebook."

But even worse is the feedback loop. The oracles of Guelph describe it with such accurate precision: "Heightened jealousy leads to increased surveillance of a partner's Facebook page. Persistent surveillance results in further exposure to jealousy-provoking information."

Once you are on that slippery slope, you are headed for slippery slop. Naturally, some respondents (for they were students) began to use the word "addiction" to describe their behavior.

Having read these utterly depressing conclusions, all I can hear right now are the words of the wise human researcher, Sting--or at least some of his words: if you love someone, set them free from Facebook.

Social crises come upon us like paparazzi down the alleyways of Hollywood. In what seems like a flash, we turn around, smile, and see what we have become.

So it is imperative that I warn you of a deeply concerning trend that may well be sweeping the world: the use of laptops and mobile devices in bed.

A company called Credant Technologies, which appears to specialize in something called endpoint data protection, suspected that the world was heading toward something untoward between the sheets. So it commissioned a survey to discover whether workaholia was causing melancholia.

The results will numb.

It appears that 57 percent of those who said they worked in bed (more than a quarter of those surveyed) said they whipped out their devices between 2 and 6 hours a week. Eight percent said they spent more evening time on their devices than talking with their partners.

Does she seem happy to you?

(Credit: CC Riot Jane/Flickr)

I am sure your first thought (after counting the number of hours you are mobile while prostrate) is to consider the effect this must have on these poor people's loved ones.

Do they screech and howl in frustration? Do they scour the bars, the health clubs, and the monasteries for new lovers, ones who are less inclined to connect with others while reclined? Or do they, perhaps, have makeovers that cause them to look slightly more like something designed by Apple, BlackBerry, or Dell?

While you consider the possibilities, might I attempt to ease your involuntary eyelid-twitch by describing a little of the methodology of this survey.

A mere 300 people were asked about their digital proclivities. And all 300 were employed in the City of London, where it is perhaps inevitable that workers need to use their laptops just before snoring, being a city with a proclivity for more than few afterwork pints.

However, I would be interested to hear from those whose relationships; television viewing; trashy novel reading; hygiene of the hands, feet, nose, or other bodily areas; oh, and sex lives have been affected by a deep and lasting need to be connected to work, when they should be connected to their reason for living.

People, if you don't put your Apple or BlackBerry away...your gadgets may be the only things joining you in bed.

Relationships are difficult. They have their ups. They have their downs. And they have their outs.

As was recently discovered by Antonio M., that rare Italian with a romantic streak. Antonio has a Facebook page. He is proud of that page. So much so that he posted a picture of himself in partying mode.

Atlas liked to party with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Antonio's partying mode, on the other hand, seems to include staring at a camera while two naked breasts are placed on his head.

Now it isn't for me to judge how people like to party. Some meet up, some tweet up and some just mess up.

(Credit: CC Jakob Botter/Flickr)

Which you might consider to be Antonio's case because his fiancee spotted the picture on Facebook. Well, it was the only one with her intended looking as if he intended to buy himself a revolutionary type of wedding hat.

Valeria A., whose breasts these were certainly not, became rather upset. She immediately called off the wedding.

However, that action was slightly insufficient to describe her rage. So she and a friend printed up several hundred pictures of the possibly plastered Antonio and his bebreasted head and plastered them all over Rome.

For those who might not have known the story, she added a little text, happily translated by the Sun newspaper in England: "Thank goodness there's Facebook! At least I've discovered you're a traitor pig before the wedding! Signed, your former betrothed bride and the 548 guests of our wedding."

548 guests? I wonder how many of those are still Antonio's Facebook friends.

"Does the money make me more attractive than I really am?"

I know those are words have pummeled the lips of many of you out there, bursting to be heard. You swallow them with your pride, just in case the answer might be, well, yes.

So perhaps you might be one of the 300,000 who populate Seekingarrangement.com, a site that tries to bring together those who have money (and are, by virtue of the virtues of capitalism, older) and younger things who wish to earn money in exchange for being, in the site's immaculate vernacular, sugar babies.

Seekingarrangement.com is profiled at some glorious length in Sunday's New York Times and one could scarcely think of a more appropriate subject for Easter Sunday. Here we have luminous Hefners in search of, hopefully, bed-hopping bunnies.

Indeed, the CEO of the site, Brandon Wey, decided to take on the name Brandon Wade. Because, he told the Times, it sounded more Hefneresque.

The Times' story is full of enchanting students who need money and pampering with the so-called finer things in life. You know, Fendi purses, Pucci dresses, and broccoli boiled in gold leaf. Of course, these finer things also may include hanging out with an old, balding, paunchy dude who just happens to have a black American Express card.

Um, this lady doesn't seem impressed with the Sugar Daddy concept.

(Credit: CC IfindKarma/Flickr)

The site itself explains it in far more lyrical (and historical) terms: "In the past, Kings, Shahs and Emperors have had multiple lovers or concubines. It is human instinct to be attracted to beauty, as it is to be attracted to wealth and power."

Well, this human instinct seems to lead (mostly) men, who have to pay to be on the site, and women, who don't, to seek each other out for mutually beneficial relationships.

These arrangements are described in quite loving detail in the Times: sugar daddies who begin to feel real affection for their babies; sugar daddies who get jealous when they discover that their babies actually have nonpaying boyfriends at college; sugar daddies who have sour breath that kills their baby's sweetness.

But the hero of the piece is Sam.

Sam's goal is not rhythm. It is algorithm. He treats Seekingarrangement.com as the perfect scientific experiment. He establishes a trust in his sugar baby's name that pays $5,000 a month. Each daddy/baby relationship is a fixed-term contract. The money continues to flow even if the river of the lady's love experiences an unexpected drought.

Sam always has a fixed budget and even has quarterly reviews to assess progress. Naturally, he has certain exigencies--no tats, no implants, no veggies, for example.

But here is the bad news for everyone out there--those working for Google and those not--who believe that life can be boiled down to rational constructs: Sam has found little evidence that spending more money brings a better quality of relationship.

And so humanity trudges on, in desperate search of its own salvation in the arms and bank account of another.

Do you see any hope, people? Any hope at all?

It's a venal world.

People scrambling over each other to reach that muddy dollar lying on the sidewalk. And uncontrolled competition to secure a lover who will make others envious of our powers of seduction.

Researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff wanted to believe differently. Or, at least, I want to believe they wanted to believe differently.

They showed women pictures of the same man in two different cars: a silver Bentley Continental and a Ford Fiesta (think small, dinged, possibly driven by an academic). Women aged 21-40 expressed a vast preference for the gentry in the Bentley.

I wanted to weep when I read this. Every profile I have ever read on Match.com tells me that women want a sense of humor, not a sense of Beemer. But no. It seems that a purring motor is the way to make a female turn feline.

Your faith in humanity may well be restored when you discover the researchers tried the same ruse with men--with very different results. The men couldn't give a broken sprocket if the woman was driving a stolen Lada. All they were interested in was...oh, go on, just guess. You know the answer.

This information drove the researchers to some brutal and depressing conclusions. The Institute's Dr. Michael Dunn told the "Telegraph": "Females focus on questions of wealth and status because if the male possesses those, that male would be in a better condition to rear healthy offspring."

You may consider a little purple pill when you hear that even when women make more money and have extremely attractive, um, cars, they still seek out men with even greater status (and, presumably, Mercedes) than their own.

My place? Or my place?

(Credit: CC The Car Spy)

Dr. Dunn, clearly a brave and happy man, even ventured to declare that women are the shallower sex. "Let's face it--there's evidence to support it," he said.