Goodbye To All That

I recently returned to the Land of the Luddites when I deactivated my Facebook account and finally rid myself of social media altogether. It was my bold attempt to ensure that Facebook Wizard Mark Zuckerberg does not earn another thin dime off me. My absence will bring his net worth down to about $205 billion from $205 billion and 10 cents before, so……a win for me!

I’ve been thinking about shitcanning my FB account for years. But I only found the final motivation to do so after Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – would end its third-party fact-checking program and ease its content restrictions.

As TechCrunch reported, the move will likely turn Facebook (and Instagram) into “more of a hotbed for misinformation and polarizing speech.” It paves the way for every liar, cheat, troll, scam artist, bot, election denier, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist and cybercriminal to hop back onto Facebook and return it to its rightful place as a toxic minefield designed to line Zuckerberg’s pockets by any means necessary.

According to The Guardian, Facebook’s profit is directly tied to user engagement – all that time people spend scrolling, clicking, commenting and viewing ads. And nothing revs up engagement like lies, misinformation, conspiracies, and the angry divisions they produce.

Zuckerberg framed the decision in the context of “freedom of speech,” which has become the favorite new buzz term of wealthy bullshit artists everywhere (see: Elon Musk). Zuck announced the new policy after fellow billionaire (and convicted felon) Donald Trump rose from the dead and inexplicably won the 2024 U.S. presidential election. America is the gift that keeps on giving to corrupt, greedy, egomaniacal rich folks.

Zuckerberg also said he welcomes a Trumpian return to “more masculine energy” at corporations. Coming from Zuckerberg, this is kind of hilarious. Of the thousands of ways Zuck can theoretically be described, “masculine” is not, never was, and never will be one of them.

Well, anyway….

I am now down to a single LinkedIn account, which technically qualifies as social media but to me seems like a pretty harmless place for professionals to network and share career advice. I deleted my Twitter account the second Musk bought it. I got off Instagram a few years ago as well.

Now I’ve been off Facebook for about a week. It hasn’t necessarily been easy. I keep thinking I need to hop on there to find out what’s going on in people’s lives. Give Facebook credit for one thing: It’s very effective at reeling you in and turning you into a social media junkie.

People are willing to give up just about everything in the name of ethics and principle – except their social media accounts. That’s how addictive it is.

There are hardcore progressives on Facebook who boycott Chick-fil-A because it once supported anti-LGBTQ policies, or boycott other companies they disagree with. But they don’t boycott Facebook (or Twitter, or Instagram, or TikTok) – even though these platforms are ground zero for everything from cyberbullying and identity theft to child exploitation and political misinformation.

Not to mention: These platforms also contribute to the obscene wealth of people like Musk and Zuckerberg. At last count, Musk was worth about $423 billion. He could literally give away $1 million a day to charity for the next 500 years and still have $240.5 billion left over – more than Zuckerberg is worth.

But what does Musk do instead? He takes a “non-official” position as a sort of financial advisor to Trump, figuring out a way to cut trillions from the U.S. budget that will likely hit poor people the hardest. Oh, and he’s also trying to spread the gospel of White Supremacy around the world.

One day the world (hopefully) will look back at this period of history and wonder how so many people could enrich so many horrible businesses. And even though I wonder the same thing myself, I’d be a liar if I didn’t acknowledge that social media has a certain guttural attraction that is hard to resist.

*****

Sometimes I think back to what my life was like during the early months of 2017, before I signed up for Facebook, and then Twitter, and then Instagram – back when I was still a social media virgin, blissfully unaware of what lurked out there on the internet, and how billions of people the world over passed their time.

I opened a Facebook account around June of 2017, just after I published a thin volume of short stories titled “Money, Love and Blood” (buy it here!). The advice I read and heard at the time is that if you are going to put a book out there, you need to promote it on social media. You can’t sell books without social media. You must have social media to be a successful writer! This echoed in my brain over and over and over and over again, and then over and over again some more.

At the time, I had exactly three experiences with social media. One was a FB account I opened around 2009 and deleted a day later after my email inbox started getting flooded with friend requests. The only other experiences were a pair of work-related Twitter and LinkedIn accounts that I barely spent a second engaging on.

But in the middle of 2017, I dived into the deep end of social media by re-opening up a Facebook account. I immediately sent out a ton of friend requests and began posting daily to share my wit and promote my book. It was all fun and games in the early days. People from my immediate and past lives showed up and welcomed me aboard. Many looked forward to buying and reading my book – literally scores and scores of them.

Because of Facebook, my book sales skyrocketed – by maybe a dozen copies. Those scores of potential book buyers must have been detoured by more important things, like sharing memes, or telling everyone what they had for lunch, or posting photos of the new garden out back. The first thing I learned about Facebook is that it gives you a place to share Every. Single. Moment. of your life.

Well, that was fine. It was all good harmless fun. People had a community to share their thoughts and experiences with, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Most of the people I engaged with on Facebook are good folks who bring a lot more light than darkness to the world.

Not all of them, of course. I had a few run-ins with assholes who didn’t know how to mind their own business or shut their mouths. They would come rampaging onto my posts full of venom and self-righteousness, whether I was writing about basketball or COVID or politics, and vomit their unwanted opinions all over the place until I finally had to tell them to kindly go fuck themselves, and I’d delete their comments, and they would unfriend me, and that would be that.

Oh well. As Joni Mitchell so eloquently put it, “Something’s lost but something’s gained in living every day…..”

The saddest part of my Facebook experience — and maybe the reason I’ve been thinking about leaving it for years — is that certain relationships with people I care about have been damaged based on political posts. That alone is reason enough to kiss it goodbye.

I will also say this: I was never really that comfortable on Facebook, even though there were periods when I engaged on it often. I was not very well attuned to its various rules of engagement. Something seemed off-kilter to me. I’m not sure how to explain it. It seemed like an unnatural way for humans to communicate. Some of the posts – many of the posts – sounded scripted, as if they were there to promote an image rather than communicate a genuine thought or feeling.

There were more than a few times when I came away from FB dialogues wondering who the hell I am and who they are and what in the world we are doing typing words into keyboards and sending them over wires and circuits and satellites to little metal boxes thousands of miles away, to be read by people I have not seen in decades and may never see again.

I did rekindle old friendships and reconnect with old classmates and colleagues on Facebook, and for that I am grateful. That was the good part.

And now? I’ll go back to the way things were before. I’ll communicate with the usual folks I’ve always communicated with, using the usual means of communication: personal visits, phone calls, emails, and text messages.

Outside of family, I have a core group of about 10 friends I stay in touch with and have for many years – some dating back to my childhood. A couple live not too far away, but most are hundreds or thousands of miles away. I’ll try to call more, visit more. I’ve been pretty lousy about that, what with the obligations of work and family, but I’ll try to do better.

I’m guessing I’ll never engage with 98% of my FB friends again. But they’ll get along fine without me – just like they did before.

And Zuckerberg will still be rich. Just not with any of my money….

Note: The photo was borrowed from Thrillist. I hope they don’t mind.