348 friends is kind of a lot. At least it is for me. I don’t know that many people, not even close. And you don’t either. Not really. So if you’re feeling like you maybe wanna trim the fat Facebook friends-wise, here’s what you should do: Write a post about the Vietnamese (and Chinese and South Korean and Philippine and Thai and Laotian and Cambodian and Indonesian and Nagalandian in Northern India) practice of eating dog. Go ahead, try it. Your Facebook page will be a friends-who-you-don’t-know free zone. And this despite prepping them with lots of discussion about cultural relativism and assurances that the dogs they eat aren’t fluffy. But I get it. We non-dog eaters tend to feel strongly about not eating dogs. And it’s really not my intention to put people off. Rather, the idea is, as my wife who still loves me put it when encouraging me to share the post on Facebook as a sneak preview that will surely entice people to read the Southeast Asia Escape Plan, to give people the opportunity to consider ideas and learn about cultural practices that are pretty foreign to their own. This sort of thing will make us better, more tolerant people because lots of varied experiences can lead us to entertain the idea that our own deeply held beliefs about, say, what it’s okay to eat aren’t grounded in some ahistorical transcendental morality but instead are conventional and grounded in our own specific-ish context. But maybe this is a lot to ask of a Facebook post. Maybe it’s the type of thing best left to a blog. And maybe it’s time to be done once and for all with the whole Facebook thing entirely. Cuz who needs likes and comments and creepy emoji-hugging-heart emojis, anyway?

Above is a picture of a person and his two fluffy dogs who are totally safe from ever becoming dinner out for a motorbike ride.