It’s not Ira Glass the person. It’s Ira Glass the brand.

As an aside in a piece about using Facebook etc. as a reporting tool, Ellyn Angelotti writes:

About a month ago, I Facebook-befriended one of my storytelling idols, Ira Glass, the host of This American Life. With my request I wrote a long message sharing how much I appreciate his work and the opportunity to network with him.

I was glowing when he accepted my friendship. It granted me access to his personal page. Then my bubble burst when I saw this:

“I’m not really Ira Glass. I’m the web manager for This American Life. We’ve put this together so that fans on Facebook would have a place to give us feedback. And because we’ve got tons of video stuff to share with you from the This American Life TV show, which debuted on Showtime on March 22, 2007.”

Angelotti adds: “At least they are honest about it.”

And I guess if you can’t really be friends with Ira Glass, maybe it’s nice to hear from his web manager all about his exciting TV show which debuted on Showtime on March 22, 2007. That’s sort of like friendship. Kind of. In a way.