It has been a never ending winter here in New York. My winter blues have been longing for the chance to spend a single day outside, lounge in the park, lunch outdoors, check out street fair or two…or so I thought.

I woke up Saturday thrilled with how beautiful it was out there. On my way to the door, I couldn’t help but pause to check my Facebook. What if somebody had written on my wall? Or what if there was some new event I had to add to my online schedule? I reasoned it would be irresponsible not to check.

Whew. One Big Mistake…it sucked me in fast and frenzyish.

Checking the FB turned into a cascading whirlwind of distraction – a real trip into the ole rabbit hole. That quick glimpse, the one that wasn’t meant to cause more than a 5-minute delay tops, consumed my day. I didn’t mean for it to happen!

While checking my Funwall, I got distracted by a Juno plug advertised right there on Facebook. I needed to buy the movie that instant. “Honest to blog” (great Junoism), there wasn’t a singular moment to spare. To add that extra bit of incentive, the good folks at iTunes threw in the soundtrack to FOR GOSH DARN FREE. Service with a smile is overrated. I’ll take service with a click any day!

I promised myself I wouldn’t actually watch the movie. I also told myself I was going to go to the store instead of ordering from Fresh Direct. I lied to myself.

Once I started my viewing pleasure, I accepted couch potato status for the day. Then it happened-outside guilt: A friend called insisting we go to the Farmer’s Market or the park. I felt bad turning the offer down. I had a very real case of bad relaxation!

Apparently, this is the state of the world. The blog Stuff White People Like” depicts a similar scenario. One friend says, “Hey, lets go for a hike in the park,” so the other guy says, “Thanks but I’ve been working all week and I’m really excited about watching this game,” and then the first guy responds with, “Don’t be a lump on the couch, you’re wasting your life away,” etc. Supposedly, “If you ignore them, they eventually go away.” Or so we can only hope.

During the sofa stupor I started messaging with an old friend who now spends his days teaching and traveling some outside world. He was on the side of a mountain in Dubai and he was on AIM! Yes, AIM. Which begs the question, is there even such a thing as the outdoors anymore? Does it exist?

Shed the shame, people, remember we’re celebrating Outdoors 2.0. Everyone wants to stay home–it’s national agoraphobia! When people are outside, they are on their Crackberry, phone or connected anyway—glancing at something. Exhale now.

My name is Richard and I’m a WiFi guy. I admit it extends further than my MetroCard. There I said it! First step to solving, right?

Facebook. It’s a verb, it’s an adjective, it’s a voyeuristic bonafied stalking tool. I can’t get enough of it nowadays.

When I cannot fall sleep, instead of counting sheep or watching latenight reruns of poker shows, I travel to Facebookland. I visit profiles of friends, then friends of friends, then friends of friends of friends and so on. I look through photo albums and compare movie taste. Don’t judge, you do it too – admit you love it.

Yet while we revile in Facebook’s awesomeosity we must pause to note Emily Post never penned a screed on such netiquette. There are dos and don’ts and today we review them.

Friend Requests:

I have at least 14 pending friend requests. Testament to my aloof coolness? Well, duh. But a testament to other people spazzing out when they join. Listen, buddy, just because you’re friends with one of my friends doesn’t mean I want you posting on my wall.

Got it?

FB is a powerful networking tool and we cannot abuse it. And if anything, trying to network by creeping people out – yes, it’s a little creepy to get a friend request from someone you vaguely recall possibly meeting once in a meeting you forgot about long ago –is counter productive. So don’t do it.

Newsfeed:

Two keywords: privacy setting. Learn it, manage it, love it. Really, you’re not a fan of Grey’s Anatomy anymore? Suddenly over the reality craze? No longer a member of the Lactose Intolerant League? Great. But every time you add or subtract a group, preference, etc. your friends see it on their newsfeed. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad, but you better be the one making that decision.

“Think That’s Scary?” Check out this unbelievably real mini-doc about Facebook that explains what is truly going on while you type away… Yikes, right?

Relationship Status:

A friend of mine just separated from her husband. Understandably freaked out! Not so understandably, she RAN to Facebook and changed her status from “Married” to “It’s Complicated.” Did everyone need to know that right away? Was that good for her or her husband—with whom she obviously hasn’t worked it out? As her shocked brother-in-law wrote to me, “WTF?!!” Translate that to “Please be prudent and sensitive in the future.”

Newbies & Pros:

The pros are FB guinea piglets and I love them so. They went to High School and college when FB was first coming up. It’s as much a part of their lives as cable is for me. By now we’ve all heard the story about the job applicant who got turned down because of a randy pic from a frat kegger. You know why we’ve all heard it? It’s not apocryphal. People please, check yourself before you wreck yourself! What makes sense at 19 is wrong at 23 when you’re at your first job, friending everyone in your office, and have a humorless boss wondering why his newest hire was tagged in a photo last weekend making out with a dude in a monkey suit (or worse, a monkey sadly placed in a dude suit).

While the plight of the pros is well known, the saga of that amateur is hardly documented. These are the 30+ year olds who joined to stay relevant, to network professionally, or because they read about it in Parade. I’m not naming names (take that, Kazan!), but I heard about an entertainment bigwig who signed up to connect with his “perceived audience.” This media maven, who barely knows Web 2.0 from “Charlotte’s Web,” actually posted his home address and phone number in his profile. Facebook asked, so he answered… makes sense?

[Note: If you answered yes, please don’t join FB without first consulting with a non-snarky niece or nephew or read “Facebook for Dummies,” a very real and useful title.]

Meaning of the above: For two dramatically different reasons, both the pros and the amateurs are ignoring some common sense rules here.

Let’s sum up so you can click off and get back to you social networking mania: 1) get to know how the darn thing works, 2) learn your netiquette, 3) know all audiences, 4) think about yourself, and please, when in doubt, just repeat the mantra less is more 5) err on the side of privacy and ponder the future of whatever* is unerasable (everything*).

If you must, absolutely MUST join Facebook (really, we need to get our Scrabulous on) be your ingenious self and take your time, and if you aren’t able to figure it out, take your intern to lunch and make him do it for you!

I’d like to hear your experiences. Write on dude.