The Mysterious Bartleby

Bartleby’s facebook page is singularly dull and yet perplexingly intriguing. He was originally told to create one by a coworker and said, “I’d prefer not to.” That coworker though went behind his back a created it for him and tried to force to use it normally. He twisted it to his own mysterious ways though. He refuses any friend requests, even the person who made it for him. In fact the only time anyone ever sees his facebook page is when they peek over shoulder at work. What they have seen perplexes them to no end. There is no profile picture, but instead a picture of a wall. In his profile he has typed, ‘I would prefer not to tell you about myself,” and all the pictures he has are of the same wall that his profile picture is. In fact, they are all shot from exactly the same angle, yet due to lighting, it is clear that they are all different photos. On his wall, he has written, “I’d prefer not to have this facebook page. Can’t you see why?” Other than that, there is really little activity on his page. His coworkers will finds him logged onto facebook simply staring at all the wall shots he has taken.

The reason I have chosen to do Bartleby in this manner is that he is extremely weird. I can simply picture him writing those things and taking pictures of the same wall over and over again, then just staring at them. I had to include the background because I simply couldn’t imagine him taking the trouble of making the page himself. Yet he goes through some trouble not to interact, even with the opportunity, as with his facebook page.