To be clear, I don’t mean “leaving Facebook” in the sort of foot-stomping, temper tantrum “I’m taking my ball and going home!” kind of way that so many people did during the heated run-up to the election.
I’m leaving Facebook, and the rest of social media, in the same way that I left New York City.
I didn’t leave NYC because I hated it, I left because it because it no longer suited my needs. I had changed. New York had changed. I left. From a pro’s versus con’s list kind of way it was becoming increasingly illogical to continue to live there. I still go back from time to time and I find it enjoyable in that context. This is the kind of leaving I mean.
So what are my reasons? Well, for one, I don’t really find anything of much interest to me on Facebook, or most social media, anymore. The level of discourse (and level of interest in things beyond the most base and echo-chamber-y meme dumpster information) has seemingly disappeared from my feed. In short, it’s become, at best, Boring and, at worst, Sad.
So, that’s one reason but, the real reason is that I have to make a morally reasoned stand against censorship and limiting speech.
Obviously a lot of people are talking about the War on Free Speech that has begun recently. While I certainly don’t agree with extreme positions from either the left or the right, I do think it’s important to have diversity of ideas, even if they are fucking terrible ideas. With free access to information comes responsibility. Basically, the ability to read, understand and make personal decisions, using reason and critical thinking, about the quality of the information presented.
Allowing multi-billion dollar corporations to make these decisions for you, with algorithms and blacklists, certainly isn’t the answer. Why? Frankly, Google, Facebook and other effective information monopolies do not have your well being in mind. They are for-profit corporations. They do stuff that makes profits. Stuff like selling your data, manipulating your information feed and, ultimately, manipulating the way you think. I find this kind of thing creepy and dangerous.
Obviously, it’s not like the social interwebs just became creepy in the past six months or something.
They started out, with Friendster and what came after, as really useful, fun platforms that augmented and enhanced real world communities, or what I would call “distractions with utility”. I struck the same bargain that many people who understood this type of technology at the time did: I was willing to accept a bit of Silicon Valley creep for free access to these networks that I found pleasing.
Fast forward to today where you routinely experience people who, more or less, live through social media in an unwholesome soup of flame posts, clickbait, Ads disguised as real posts, FOMO, memes and all kinds of other manipulative cultural trash. Of course this isn’t the way that all people co-habitate with social media. It’s a spectrum that spans the above scenario to people who have no social media presence at all because they think it’s a waste of time. You’re probably in the middle. I was in the middle.
More to the point, by the time that social media began to alarm me with it’s increasingly skeezy moves, I had become somewhat dependent on these networks for a manifold of personal and business reasons. I was stuck in a trap of convenience. Should I chew off my foot or hope that the trap becomes obsolete? Man, I really did want to keep that foot.
Circling back to the censorship issue, sort of leaving Facebook, etc., etc. I can’t and won’t give any more time or energy to a system that will say out loud, let alone implement, these kinds of opaque censorship “solutions”… as much as I can.
Should I delete my various accounts, cancel my ISP and burn my laptop? No. Totally quitting social media and/or the internet is stupid for obvious, cutting off one’s nose to spite the face type, reasons. My info is already out there and I seriously doubt that it is going anywhere anytime soon. All of the bells of cyber-life cannot be unrung, to think otherwise is just insane.
With this in mind I’ve decided to “leave” in a rational, measured way. I’ll check my social media once a week just to prove to myself that I haven’t missed anything at all and check my messages so I can tell people to contact me using email, like a fucking adult.
Dear God! Wherever WILL I get my information from?
Well, increasingly, I have been getting it from good, old fashioned blogs.
No, not those kinds of aggregator, lists of lists or news sites.
Nope. I mean blogs written by one person who I think is smart, funny and interesting, even if almost no one else thinks so. They are out there and they are awesome. Lots of them. (and NO I don’t mean sites that provide an indy version of the echo chamber/bubble for whatever my political/social/cultural world view. I mean sites that make me think, challenge my preconceived notions and are outwardly hostile to ideology) Today I read an essay that examined the Gilmour Girls reboot, JJ Abrams reboots, nostalgia, Twitter, the left, the right, election fallout, Camille Paglia and what the definition of conservative actually means. It was written by a gay, Australian, former BBC documentary producer who writes books about magic.
Now that is the kind of diversity of thought I am talking about. Rich, weird, delicious diversity.
I like this kind of thing (and by “like” I mean it fills me with hopeful awe of things human beings can do. When was the last time you felt good or hopeful reading the internet for more than 5 minutes?) for the same reasons I like and prefer Jackson Heights, Queens to a Walmart. Jackson Heights is alive, real and exciting. A singular place that only exists in Jackson Heights, Queens. Walmart is dead, fake and is only slightly better than being stuck in a hospital waiting room. You can sample this corporate esthetic anywhere you got and it always tastes like bland, gray sadness and smells like old band-aids.
The hospital waiting room cannot be avoided forever but I figure I can make it a point to spend as little time as possible hanging out there.
Recipe
Buy a TV dinner (I recommend Salisbury Steak). Heat according to directions. Eat as much as you can stomach and then leave it in a parking lot somewhere.
Pairing
A nice inky glass of growing paranoia
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