Google has thrown its hat into the social networking ring with Google+. Or rather, it’s throwing the latest of several hats into the ring, the previous hats having been stomped into wads of filthy felt scraps. However, Google assures us that Google+ is nothing like Buzz, Orkut and Wave: To begin with, it doesn’t sound like a rejected Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain. Secondly, I dunno, it has circles or something.

The most common response to Google+ that I’ve heard is, “Good, I hate Facebook.” This is from people already using Facebook.. These people are praying for the death of a free service they voluntarily signed up for. And I know just how they feel, because I hate Facebook so much I only log into it about eight times a day.

So why are we all on Facebook, hating Facebook together? Is it our love of the mafia and their wars? Do we enjoy being notified every time someone we barely know is throwing a party on the other side of the continent? Is it that important we let everyone know we “Like” ice cream?

Of course not. We’re on Facebook because everyone else is on Facebook. In this way, Facebook imitates life.

Here’s a phrase I never hear: “Boy, I hope someone gets married soon, because I’m dying to attend a wedding.” Nor do I ever hear, “We should have family reunions twice a year!” And then there’s, “I don’t care if I win an award, I just love attending awards dinners.”

And yet, weddings, family reunions and awards dinners occur with depressing regularity. We go to them because other people are going to them. Also because if we stay home and play L.A. Noire instead, we’re never going to hear the end of it.

We join Facebook because our friends do, and they bug us, and eventually it’s just easier to join than not join. And then we hassle any holdouts we know to join up as well, because why should they enjoy their life unencumbered by status updates when we can’t?

And yet the herding instinct is strong in our species. We move from GeoCities to LiveJournal to MySpace to Facebook, looking for the perfect experiment in mass intimacy rather than just admitting that we don’t want to swallow a glistening golden stream composed of the mental excretions of everyone we know. We want to be part of the in-crowd without having to be part of the crowd.

We all want to be popular, well-loved, well-connected hermits.

In short, we all want to be popular, well-loved, well-connected hermits.

Google+ might hit the big time by surfing the wave of Facebook resentment while eluding dead rats and discarded styrofoam cups. If so, its time will eventually come to an end as people realize that it, too, fails to provide the sense of community and closeness that we keep expecting to find on the other side of our keyboards.

Is the solution to somehow recapture the personal ties of years long past, when we knew our neighbors and the front porch was the main locus of information exchange? Will we create true community by embracing our humanity rather than our technology?

Nah. As soon as they invent a sexbot that can pretend to care about how many plots of tomatoes we planted in FarmVille, we won’t need other people anymore.

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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a popular, well-loved, well-connected hermit.