Should I stay or should I go: My Facebook dilemma
Truth be told, I’ve already decided to leave Facebook.
I deactivated my account in early September and I haven’t thought about it much since. And I know I’m not the only one who’s gone, or is thinking about leaving. Of course the company is incontrovertibly evil. What’s been made clearer to me is that it’s also a creativity suck. And what surprises me most recently is how alienating it is. I thought it was helping me feel closer to people, but in many ways I feel more alone than ever, and I don’t think it’s just the rona.
At this point, my only real dilemma is, is it a good idea, professionally, to leave such a resource, just as I’m trying to build a freelance career? My writer and artist and journalist friends? The editing and writing groups, such as Editors on Earth and the Binders groups. I am connected to smart, experienced and savvy people.
Facebook is like People magazine
Lately I’ve been thinking about Facebook the way Fran Lebowitz described about People magazine not long after it first appeared in 1974. My 11th grade creative writing teacher, John Charles Smith, read her article to our class when we were studying essay writing — he also read Joan Didion's extraordinary essay on self-respect and if you haven’t read it, what are you doing here?
Lebowitz wrote that People magazine is like Pringles, another new product at the time. Like Pringles, you can buy it at the airport magazine stand, she said, and be finished by the time your plane takes off. Like Pringles it goes down easy, but you don’t feel nourished or satiated afterward.
That’s Facebook, although give the devil his due, unlike Pringles or People, Zuckerberg managed to make a product that never runs out. That’s part of what makes it evil, of course.
I avoid potato chips these days but my vacation ritual still is to buy People, which is how I know I’m off the clock. In the same way, I could just keep picking up Facebook from time to time. But after being off for a few weeks, I’m seeing that Facebook is no longer about true-life intimacy and community for me, it’s about the appearance of them. And that’s not working any more.
I have about a thousand friends, people from all walks of my life and several cities over several decades. I do not friend people I don’t know or like and I deeply treasure about 150 of them. But I don’t pick up the phone and call them. I don’t email them, or write them cards or (gasp) letters. If I’m in their city I don’t go out of my way to see them. I do see people use Facebook as a virtual version of their in-person community and god bless them.
Facebook as creativity sap
I also find the ease of posting saps my creative energy. We all know the algorithms are designed to keep me on the page, of course, and there’s nothing so rewarding as a few dozen likes. Birthdays on Facebook are joy. A few years ago I wrote a funny post about trapping a mouse and not realizing it was still alive when I flushed it down the toilet. I got over 100 likes, commiserations and suggestions. It seems that everyone has a mouse story, everyone has opinions about mice. And that’s what gave me pause: After I posted that bit, my daughter encouraged me to blog again. Why wasn’t I blogging?
Facebook really is evil
If you need more convincing about the evils of Facebook, the first thing that comes to mind tends to be its role in allowing the Russians to hack the 2016 election, but even before that Facebook facilitated the Rohingya genocide. The company is finally making noises about eliminating QAnon, but the damage is done: It’s already entrenched as the platform of the far right. It’s impossible to change it. And Facebook isn’t just evil, it’s bad, which I can’t argue with. Yes, I have seen the very slick Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix. The idea that not only are we the product but that social media is manipulating us into behaving certain ways is pretty appalling.
I make no claims to righteous consistency here. I’m going to leave Facebook’s Instagram too, and probably WhatsApp, although my meditation teacher just created a group chat for their students. The mainstream world has lost its love affair with technology — Slate polled tech writers about the 30 most odious tech companies. Rightfully so, Amazon tops the list, followed by Facebook of course, and Google — Alphabet. Apple is in the top 10. I am trying to move away from Amazon but I still use Apple and Google.
You’ll find me on LinkedIn, which I’ve been punching up, and Twitter, which I find hilarious and informative. Twitter serves as my news aggregator more than anything, and I follow a wide range of people so that I can get new perspectives, especially from the POV of someone of color, or from somewhere other than New England or the United States, or with a different sexuality or gender identity. It feels more like a vast public forum that I can step in and away from at any time I choose. It’s addictive but not in the same way.
In my new Facebook-free world, I plan to make phone calls and write letters and emails. I intend to publish a blog post at least weekly and I’m hoping my friends will follow it and maybe even comment from time to time. Stay tuned. Stay in touch.
