Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today was social networking. I'm not talking Facebook, Twitter, Friendface or what have you here. I'm talking actual social networks.

"Social networking" is one of those terms that sprung up a few years back, along with the word "leverage" being used as a verb (stop it!), and the obnoxiousness that is "monetize". But it actually has some grounding in good sense, for once. Our social lives are nothing if not a network. And society in general is one gigantic network of people, some of whom are connected to each other, others who are not.

Let me give you an example. You walk into a shop. You attempt to buy a Cornish pasty from the gentleman behind the counter. For some reason, you have some difficulty. Perhaps the shop in question does not sell Cornish pasties. Perhaps the gentleman behind the counter is having difficulty understanding your heavily-accented English. Perhaps you muttered what you said. Perhaps you delivered your request in sign language and the gentleman behind the counter is unfamiliar with it.

Regardless, you have difficulty acquiring said meat-filled pastry product. As a result, your brain informs your mouth that it would be a really good idea to call said gentleman a "twat". So you do. Then you storm out of the shop. Cut back to gentleman behind the counter, who is standing flabbergasted at the frankly disproportionately offensive response that a dissatisfied customer just gave him. (It was a bit rude. There are plenty of other places to get a pasty.)

His friend comes out of the back room to see what's happening. He tells her that he just got called a "twat" by someone, and he's actually a little bit annoyed about that. His friend tells him not to worry and reminds him that there's a night out planned that evening.

That evening, gentleman and his friend go out for a drink or two with a crowd of friends. Gentleman is a little sullen, so one of his friend's friends (let's call her Alice) comes over and asks him what the problem is. Gentleman knows Alice, but not very well. But he quite likes her, so he tells her about the earlier incident and describes you perfectly.

"Oh!" says Alice. "You mean Sam / Don Woods / Kittycow / Elana / Matt / Jeff / Jen / Pook / Rachel / Moonsong / Jane / Mandy / Calin / Graham / Chris / Amy / Denise / Mark / Lynette / that person I know whose name escapes me right now*? Yeah, they're always like that. Don't take it personally."

The next time you see Alice, she tells you to stop calling people in shops twats. You raise an eyebrow at her, then you both have a good laugh about it. Or she punches you in the face. One or the other.

This is a small-scale and somewhat contrived scenario, of course. But these sorts of things are happening every day on varying levels. What is happening to me right now is indirectly going to affect the lives of many, many others. While it would be somewhat presumptious of me to overstate my own influence over other people, I know for a fact that there are at least a couple of people out there who have very strong feelings about the fact I am leaving. These reasons are very different from one another. Some of them know each other, some of them don't. All of them know that I wouldn't do this if I had a choice.

Unfortunately, I don't. And I'm sorry that the actions and choices I have made, along with actions and choices I have no control over, have led to this point, where so many people's lives are going to be just that tiny bit different from hereon.

Those of you who are going to be that little bit farther away from me than you were before, I'm just an email, comment, text, phone call, tweet, IM, PingChat message or really, really loud scream away. Those of you that all this isn't affecting directly? Well, I hope you can join everyone in keeping your fingers crossed that this is the beginning of something new and awesome.

I leave town tomorrow sometime. Those of you in the area, keep an eye on Twitter and your phones for details of a meetup.

* Interactivity! Delete as applicable.

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