I find people’s compulsion to make a grand exit kind of comical, so I am hoping this doesn’t come across like that. But, the short version is this: I am going to step away from traditional social media for the foreseeable future. The longer version is something of an explanation of where I am in this process, an explanation I hope doesn’t come across like this image:
This has very little to do with Facebook’s recent move to close off Donald Trump’s access to the platform; I understand this is perfectly within Zuck, et al’s legal rights, and I support their decision to muzzle whomever they decide is causing too much trouble. Every “free market” argument I’ve ever had with dyed-in-the-wool conservatives has taught me that the “free market” should be allowed to do whatever it wants, including discriminate against anyone they want. This is a central feature to “free market capitalism,” not an unfortunate “bug.” (To be honest, I don’t buy all of the “the-free-market-is-always-the-solution” stuff I’ve learned from these folks … in fact, I don’t buy most of it. But, given that this is primarily the crowd we are having to counterbalance when they shout about First Amendment rights, censorship, etc. I think it’s important to speak their language, so to speak, when describing what’s been happening over the past few weeks.)
Like I said, this has almost nothing to do with any of Facebook/Twitter/Apple/Google/etc and their decisions to muzzle specific voices. I think they are right to do that. The fact that we’ve put ourselves in a position where so much power over “speech” lies in so few hands is something we need to examine and probably dismantle to a certain extent. At the very least, these massive conglomerates should be broken up and better regulated … but this is for a different discussion.
(This has more to do with Facebook, Twitter, etc. business model [private data mining] and the general societal cost they’ve shown over the last few years.)
What I am actually getting at, here is that I am trying to be more deliberate about several things, my use of social media included. To be all Marie Kondo-y about it; Facebook and Instagram do not spark any kind of joy for me … quite the opposite, in fact.
I have generally tried to use Facebook in a way that was positive, or at least a way that was not excessively negative. I have certainly not been free of resorting to what could be called judgmental snarky-ness, though, at times when I found everything exasperating and I had lost my patience with people (both individually and as a whole). But, the thing is, I have watched Facebook tear relationships to shreds. I have found myself feeling far more unkind things about people (both individually and as a group) than I am generally inclined to do.
Yes, of course Facebook was just a medium through which people were trying to communicate, but the semi-anonymous nature of the medium seems to bring out the absolute worst in many people (myself included at times). Ideas about individualism like to make everything individuals acting in a vacuum, but that’s not reality; we all live connected to one another and every action is related to those around us. When dealing with a worldwide social network, the “around us” part gets significantly bigger.
There are people I know much better in real life than I do on Facebook, people I generally like and with whom I generally “get along.” But, if I only knew them via Facebook, if the only thing I knew about them was the persona they put forward on Facebook, I would definitely not get along with them very well. (Of course, there may be people who would say this about me. I hate the thought, but it’s probably true.) Why do we do this? Why do so many of us act like total assholes when interacting in this strange online “community?” There is a quote in You’ve Got Mailwhere Joe Fox tells Kathleen Kelly that she shouldn’t take things so personally: “It’s not personal; it’s business.” he tells her. She later comes back back with a comment about how “if anything should start somewhere, it should start by being personal.” I think she is right. Everything should begin by being personal; everyone we talk to, everyone with whom we interact is first a person, a person living a life rich with complexities, confusions, triumphs, and tragedies quite a lot like our own. Somehow, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter strip that all away and make everyone and everything less than “personal.” I am definitely like Kathleen; stuff that was never meant to be “personal,” is to me. As a result, I think far too much about what every comment or every post might mean, most especially when it involves me or groups of which I am a member (be that “surfers,” “fathers,” “bald guys,” “Californians,” “people who drive Priuses,” “academics,” “former vegetarians” … whatever).
I am not placing all of the blame on Facebook, Twitter, etc. But, I am also not willing to give them some sort of free pass. These companies could have made the communities better; there are lots of things that could have, should have been done to make their platforms into something much less toxic. But, a fact remains that outrage = more eyeballs on the “content” which = $$ for these companies, so it wasn’t in their financial interest to build platforms which minimized outrage. And, like a bunch of people pretending not to look on curiously at the wreckage of a multi-car pile-up, we all gladly played into the outrage game.
I am also not willing to give the blowhards who have gone out of their way to be overly political, offensive, or otherwise extra-awful human beings any sort fo pass either. There are lots of people—I am still shocked at just how many—who seem to find personal energy out of pissing people off. Of course, talk radio set the stage for this, but the online version is something even nastier in some ways.1 I know some people like this who seem, “in real life,” to be relatively-normal folks, but online, they turn into monsters. Again, why?
But, there are some times when I have found Facebook useful. I have gotten (well-paying!) gigs through Facebook. I have had very meaningful, heartfelt discussions through Facebook. I have learned new ways of seeing the world through interactions on Facebook.2 Thus, I don’t really want to leave completely. But, I also recognize that my mental state is generally better when I stay away from things that make me upset, which so many things I see on Facebook have a tendency to do.
So, I am going to keep my Facebook account open, and will probably post links to events, new posts on my website (which I definitely want to do more), and various things I want to try to promote about my classes and the college. But, I am going to be a lot more deliberate about all of it.
Here is where I say, please, if you want to stay in touch with me, do so. Send me a message via email or through my website, or a text message, or via Signal, or whatever. I would like that. But, don’t expect me to be super responsive on Facebook/Instagram anymore.
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As an aside: I have made a habit of specifically not watching any videos someone shares with words like “shreds,” “demolishes,” or “obliterates” in the title/description. Ditto for almost anything from Jeanine Pirro, Ben Shapiro, or Bill Maher (and lots of others); those folks are purposefully insensitive and overly-simplistic and want little more than to wound people. ↩︎
I don’t know if I have had any positive experiences with Twitter. I have had a few accounts over the years, but I never really felt like I was getting anything useful out of the platform … just a lot of out-of-context yelling and echoing. I am still trying to figure out why Instagram is so popular or what it is actual use-case is (which is a topic that needs its own post.) ↩︎