Good news, everyone!  At long last, here comes another blog post on this site!

“It’s about time!” I can hear you saying.  “It’s been over a month since you have last posted on here, and I demand more frequent reading material and entertainment to get me through the drudgery of my COVID life!  What have you been doing for the last month?”

Well, sorry to disappoint my loyal readers, but I have never put pressure on myself to post at a certain frequency level.  And after going back to the office for the past month (and no, I don’t mean I’ve spent the past month in the office 24-7, I’m just no longer confined to working from home), I have spent less time sitting on my red couch at home doing nothing.  Still some, just…less.  Don’t worry though, this blog isn’t going anywhere.  I’ll still post on here at a yet-to-be-determined frequency, so keep checking back here periodically for updates.

When I originally started this blog, before showing it to anyone else, I asked for suggestions from my editor-in-chief unofficial and unpaid blog consultant.  At the time, it literally had the name Blog.  She told me, “You might want to give it a fun name other than Blog.”  Also, knowing my long-running refusal to join Facebook, she told me, “This is like you’re on Facebook.”  At that moment, the idea was born for the name of my blog, Better Than Facebook.  So, I decided to devote some time here to explain exactly why this blog is better than Facebook.  Also, since I’m a fan of top ten lists, and with apologies to David Letterman, I’m going to give you a list of the top ten reasons why this blog is better than Facebook.

10.       Song parodies.  I have three song parodies on here.  How many song parodies do you see on Facebook?  I’m not on Facebook, so I can only assume zero.  Even if there are several, surely none of them are as good.

9.         Less strain on your time.  It might be easy to get sucked into getting on Facebook for minutes or even hours a day, searching for pictures of sandwiches and other mundane nuances of the daily lives of friends or casual acquaintances or people you went to middle school with.  With this blog, all you have to do is read it once a week or so.  (Or maybe even once a month?  Let’s say once a week in the hopes that I’ll post more.)  Maybe even leave a comment on a new post if you’d like.  That’s about it.  It’s less addicting than Facebook, and you won’t waste a bunch of your time on here that could be spent walking your dog.  Or making mac and cheese.  Or whatever it is you do with your time.

8.         This blog is the new thing.  Facebook used to be the new trendy thing that young people were on.  It started in 2004 among college students as a platform mainly for the younger generation to communicate.  Now it’s sixteen years later, the Facebook generation has gotten older, and many attitudes have turned from “This is the best thing ever” to “Oh yeah, I’m still on Facebook, but whatever.”  And while the new younger generation has also joined Facebook, their preferred social media platforms are Snapgram or Tweet Tok or Instaface or whatever other new ones are out there, rather than old boring Facebook that their parents are on.  The point is, Facebook is now seen as old news that people grown tired of by now.  Meanwhile, this blog was just started this year, and is the new thing that people are surely not yet tired of.

7.         Non-exclusive content.  You can read anything I post on here without having to join something or subscribe to anything in order to read it.  Although, feel free to follow this blog to get automatic notifications when I post anything.  But even if you don’t, you can still hop on here anytime to see if I have.  So, hypothetically, if I were to announce an engagement or the birth of a child on a blog post without telling people in real life, you would still be able to read it.  Whereas, if I were to join Facebook and announce such an event exclusively on Facebook without telling people in real life, I would be excluding people who are not on Facebook from such an announcement.  Incidentally, no, I have nothing to announce here, and I’m not suggesting I would make such an announcement over a blog – I’m just using a hypothetical scenario to make a point.

6.         No socially awkward situations.  You don’t have to make any awkward decisions about whether to accept a friend request from someone who might not necessarily be a friend.  Okay, you might have to decide whether you want to follow this blog and get automatic email notifications on posts, but even then, I’m not concerned about that.  On here, unlike Facebook, you don’t have to decide where to draw an arbitrary line of friendship.  You also don’t have to worry about anyone poking you on here (is that still a thing?), or whether to post a relationship status, or any other potentially awkward things like that which Facebook users might have to consider.

5.         No social drama.  I understand that it’s common for people to get upset by reading a post or a reply on Facebook, or for an innocent remark on Facebook to be taken the wrong way, and for it to turn into drama.  I suppose that may technically happen here – maybe something I’ve written has enraged you to the point where you never want to speak to me again.  In fact, the people-pleaser in me always fears this to be the case.  But I’m guessing that’s probably not true here.  You’re not going to get the drama on here that you do on Facebook.

4.         No political drama.  This is basically point #5 again, except even more so, and intensified every four years.  In case you weren’t aware, we have a presidential election coming up this year.  I have been given to understand that this results in an increase of politically charged Facebook posts.  This may result in accelerated levels of annoyance, unfriending, and unnecessarily strained relationships while Facebook devolves into arguments, some of which is about stupid stuff.  I often hear the question, “Why do I make myself angry with this?”  This blog, on the other hand, is intended to be a drama-free zone.  Whatever I do say, I’d like to think I can say it in a way that doesn’t unnecessarily upset half the audience.  Although if you’d rather have the drama and make yourself angry, feel free to hop over to Facebook.

3.         Facebook privacy concerns.  I won’t belabor this point, but I believe it’s well documented that there are concerns over the way Facebook handles people’s privacy, and you won’t have to worry about that on here.

2.         Facebook doesn’t have Ryan Benbow on it.  Okay, I have been informed that it does have some people who are also named Ryan Benbow, but it does not have me on it.  This blog, on the other hand, does.  If I was on Facebook, I would be just one of billions of users.  Whereas, this site is unique and has my own name as the domain.  You get premium content right here from Ryan Benbow from Indiana, and that’s something you don’t get on Facebook.

1.         Spite.  As I’m sure many of you reading this know, back when several of my friends were joining Facebook, I was encouraged to join myself.  I was hesitant at first, for reasons I won’t go into here, but when encouragement to get on Facebook turned into pressure and threats on my life insistence, that triggered my spiteful nature and sealed my refusal.  Since then, over the years, I have been labeled as “the guy who won’t join Facebook.”  So now, although getting a Facebook page would have been just as easy as starting this blog, of course there was no way I was joining Facebook after all this.  So now I have my own blog with my own domain name with an interesting title that is challenging to Facebook.  All thanks to spite.

And there you have it.  The top ten reasons why this blog is better than Facebook.  Appropriately enough, I actually started typing this list out a couple days ago, and just last night, I had a conversation among friends in which they brought up some of the exact Facebook annoyances on this very list.  So, although there are no statistics to back up any of my points, I would say this is a very appropriately timed and accurate list.

So, what’s next?  When am I going to post again?  Do I have another song parody up my sleeve?  Or another TV show review, or my thoughts on sports trying to start back up, or a random autobiographical story, or a post about the letter E?  You’re just going to have to stay tuned and find out!  Until next time, this is Ryan, encouraging you not to log onto Facebook until I post again.