facebook

Perhaps quitting Facebook will begin a cascade of new choices that leads me in the direction of living my intended values. Perhaps. That is to say, quitting Facebook feels like the ethically and morally right choice for me but I’m not on any high horse. I use Amazon Prime way too much, for example, and am not ready to look at quitting that (yet).

Why am I quitting Facebook? Here are some of my reasons:

Greed. I believe greed is at the root of all evil. The desire to have more more more more more, is what drives Facebook. What started out as a simple (disgusting) little application was then fed by the poison of selfish capitalist greed. Facebook will never be a part of the way of life I aspire to: “just enough, and not too much.”

Addiction. I don’t even *enjoy* using Facebook for the most part, but I keep doing it. I don’t consider myself an active user, despite checking it many (many!) times each day because I know others who use it even more. But I do use it a lot, so many “just checking” visits. Ugh! This compulsive behavior leads me off a spiritually-centered path.

Control. It drives me bananas that the site determines whose posts I will or won’t see. As its algorithms try to “customize my experience” (vomit!) I suddenly get lots of posts by one person or another, typically folks I don’t know all that well. It’s super-frustrating. Yes, I could create lists or whatever, to see just the people I’d like to see, but I’d rather see *everyone’s* stuff as they post it without having to spend time manually customizing.

Ads. Ugh, again. Sponsored posts and other ads. Even with ad-blockers, that garbage comes through. Sometimes I have more sponsored posts than posts from friends.

Fear. It makes me angry that when I considered quitting Facebook, I felt afraid. I felt like my business might suffer, that I’d miss out on important socio-cultural events, that “these days we ‘have to’ have a presence on Facebook.” Because my business survived and thrived before Facebook, I know it’s a lie that I need it now. The truth is, I get new clients via word of mouth, not from Facebook.

Surveillance Capitalism. This is where I know that quitting Facebook won’t solve the problem, but it is part of why I’m quitting. I heard an interview with Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power” and her argument that our personal information is a new commodity. As she says, rivers and meadows were turned into “real estate” and our personal information is now a commodity being bought, sold, and traded. I’m currently in too deep (see my mention above of using Amazon Prime), so I’m not free of this. It simply feels like deleting Facebook will be a step in the right direction.

I will miss the people. I will miss the former high school classmates who I got to know through Facebook better than I knew them back then. I will miss seeing people’s children on the first day of school, and sharing photos of my own. There’s quite a bit of good in the people who are using Facebook, for sure. I’ve been gathering snail-mail addresses from as many people as I can so after I delete I will at least be able to exchange annual updates with folks.

I certainly understand there are many compelling and understandable reasons to keep Facebook. I’m not shaming people who keep using it. I’m just letting you know why I’m quitting, how I already feel lighter just imagining being done with it, and that the costs don’t outweigh the benefits for me.

I’m considering — very seriously — quitting Facebook. I realize these days it’s one of the best ways to reach people, but there are so many reasons why using FB conflicts with my values…Read More →

Since the 1990s, a significant part of my social life has lived online. I started “It’s all about me! (the column)” in 1997 before we called websites of online essays “blogs.” I spent a great deal of time in AOL chat rooms and in the usenet newsgroups misc.writing and alt.music.soulcoughing. Several of the relationships I formed back in the late 90s, including the one with my ex-husband, have continued all these years. The relationship I have with my online-only friends are real; that’s why I don’t call offline life “real life” when I’m talking about online and offline.
A couple weeks ago, I began changing how I use social media. I’m cutting back on it. I’m not the only one, I know, who has found it a time suck. It’s a common refrain, “I’ve been Facebooking/tweeting/Instagramming way too much! I need to cut back!” I made one significant change and I’m now considering other steps to find more balance in my life.
What I can’t figure out is how to cut out Facebook. On the one hand, I’d love to simply delete. I know a few people who don’t use Facebook and they seem to be fully functioning members of society. So, why can’t I pull the trigger?
Honestly, I resent the fact that I feel my professional and personal life depend so much on Facebook that I would be affected negatively if I quit. What kind of world is it that a corporate product has that kind of power over me?
If I were to quit Facebook, I would miss my friends. I know that. I would miss the ease with which I can catch up with people all around the country, even around the world. I would miss the easy way I can stay semi-informed about pop culture, including politics. But, that’s part of why I don’t like it. It’s so easy. It’s seductively easy. Is it like Fight Club?

Tyler Durden: We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

Narrator: Martha Stewart.

Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.

Is it leading us to Bladerunner? Are we becoming replicants?
Am I quoting and referencing mass media movies try and process my philosophical considerations? (Yes.)
What is keeping me beholden to Facebook? I want people to read my newspaper column. That’s one thing. It’s a neat place to share that link once a month.
Then there are the real friendships, both close and casual. When I considered deleting a month or two ago, Facebook friends reminded me they enjoy my updates about my personal life. I don’t mean to sound self-important, but it matters to me that people would miss me. That’s what kept me from deleting then.
But, ugh, I don’t like Facebook. I really don’t like it. I don’t like how it feels so necessary! I’ve seen many people do very good things with it as an organizing tool. I believe it can be used as a force of good. But, ultimately, it’s a corporate product and more than one billion people use Facebook every day. How can that kind of dependence on a single corporate product be good?
Obviously, I’m not deleting Facebook yet (though I’m sorely tempted to do it right now!). And, of course, I’ll share a link to this blog post on Facebook. (Ugh!)
Here I am using a corporate product (WordPress) to make a post on social media (my website/blog). It feels a little different, though. I remember when I first started in 1997 and I used some html and an Internet connection to write my “columns.” I used Earthlink and then AOL to get online. I don’t remember what I used to write the text and code, but it certainly wasn’t something I felt was necessary to have a fully functional adult social/political life.
I’m going to shut my computer and go watch a puppet show. Then I think I’ll do some painting. Whether or not I share about it all on Facebook later, we’ll have to wait and see.
 
 
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A Facebook friend recently said I was a “shameless troll” in response to this question I’d posted:

Let me put it this way: If men really like women just as they are, how do you explain the mass marketing success of the private area hair waxing and removal and the must-be-thin-no-jigglers and the must-look-“good”-as-defined-by-mass-marketing phenomena?

I disagree I’m being a troll with this question, or that I ever would be an Internet troll. Wikipedia defines a troll as someone posting inflammatory content with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. No way that’s me. I certainly welcome emotional responses if the topics deserve them. I ♥ heated debates, discussions, arguments, conversations.
When I post content that might seem inflammatory my intent is never to just stir up the muck. I want to make my own position clear and learn what other people’s positions are. Or, I’m seeking information from other people about their perceptions. If people get into name calling and hitting brick walls not listening to each other, that’s unfortunate. But it’s absolutely and totally a price worth paying for the meaty substance that can also come from “hot topics.”
So, no. No troll here. Just me, believing in the power and pleasure of direct and blunt conversations.