I don’t do Facebook. I’ve never ousted anyone as the mayor of some hipster bar. Flickr, sure, but I’m a crummy photographer and don’t really connect there. Twitter, for all intents and purposes, is my social network. When I tell people I don’t bother with the other ones, they don’t seem to get it – why is Facebook more frivolous than 140 character “tweets”, they ask. Plus, everyone’s over there in Zuckerland, come on, it’s basically the same thing.

Except that it’s not. Facebook is where people go to dump their lives, waste time and play vampire scrabble while they should be working. There’s no artform, it’s just a heap of digital detritus, which is fine, people need that. Twitter, though, when you’re doing it right, requires craft. Favrd helped us find that.

So, like the rest of you, I was sad to see Dean had shut it down. I share some of your confusion and anger and frustrated respect at what Dean built. But mostly I’m just sad. Not in a “someone died” kind of way, more in a “I can’t believe the town newspaper shut down” kind of way. To me, that’s what Favrd always was, the newsletter (or take out menu, as it were) for our little community, not a community in and of itself.

Dean was clearly tired of being the town crier or enabler or whatever it was we all ultimately took Favrd for granted for being. I can’t fault him that and I thank him for what we had and thrill at the thought of his next project, I’m certain it will be excellent. I found some of you before that wonderful cock and I’ll find more of you after but it’s sort of amazing to think of what we had, fleeting though it may have been.