#leavingfacebook

EL LIBRO REVELADOR: CARELESS PEOPLE

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Al principio fue un gran medio para conectar con personas, pero en los últimos años, entre noticias y cosas extrañas que pasaban en la red vi que Facebook tenía un lado oscuro que me generaba desconfianza. Pero jamás imaginé la escala del daño que ha ocurrido bajo la total indiferencia de sus dueños, obsesionados solo con más y más dinero.

Pero al leer este libro "Careless People" que en su titulo completo sería en español algo así:

"Personas desconsideradas. Una historia del lugar donde solía trabajar. Poder. Codicia. Locura."

La verdad me llegó como un zarpazo final. Ahí me enteré del lado realmente oscuro. Hablo de gente muriendo, democracias colapsando, activistas de derechos humanos encarcelados. Terminar de leer Careless People”  de Sarah Wynn Williams fue devastador; un relato de denunciante que demuestra que no se puede arreglar esto desde dentro. A ellos no les importan las consecuencias reales de sus actos. Todo lo malo que sucede es por buscar más ingresos a menor costo.

“The algorithm is trying to capture the perfect parameters for manipulating a brain, while the brain, in order to seek out deeper meaning, is changing in response to the algorithm’s experiments … Because the stimuli from the algorithm doesn’t mean anything, because they genuinely are random, the brain isn’t responding to anything real, but to a fiction. That process – of becoming hooked on an elusive mirage – is addiction.”

Social Media Doesn’t Want You to Have Economic Dignity, as he describes how our modern reality was seeded by that mindset, those peculiar yes/no certainties of the web’s earliest creators. The internet was built with no way to make or get payments, no way to find other people you might like."

In the wake of the (fully unsurprising) revelation that Mark Zuckerberg intentionally permitted, throttled back, then re-permitted algorithmic promotion of hate speech for profit, I finally decided to leave. In doing so, I decided to start a list of all the reasons to leave vs. the reasons to stay.

I should have made this list years ago. The negatives so far outweigh the positives that quitting became the only logical solution. Why stay somewhere that's so awful?

The things I won't miss:

People finding literally any reason to disagree or be contrary. 

Attention-seeking.

An algorithm that A. devalues attempts at promoting work, even among friends, B. promotes high traffic posts regardless of their content and thereby promotes hate speech, C. makes me see the same ONE post by the same ONE person over and over again instead of literally anything by the more than 1,000 other people I know. 

Seeing the "laugh" react on posts about voting rights, LGBTQIA issues, and other very NOT funny topics. These issues aren’t funny, and “laughing” at them says an awful lot more about you than it does about the issue.

The anonymity that encourages people to constantly be at their worst. 

Every discussion devolving into an either/or paradigm. No room for nuanced discussion. 

People with tragic writing skills telling others "your an idiot."

Doomscrolling 

The addiction to staying up too late scrolling for that one post that might make it worth the effort. 

Getting added - without permission - to people's vanity projects veiled as well-intentioned social issues groups.

The internal monolog of how regular-ass events would sound as a Facebook post. 

The annual reminder that one of my and Sheree's first dates was at what is now a mass shooting site.

Absolutism and cruelty in "education" about important issues. You can't claim to want to change people's minds if you're calling them a piece of shit. Just admit you either want them to have always believed exactly as you do (without giving them the time to learn as you did) or that you'd rather they be dead.

Links to bias-confirming articles where the author assumes everyone else is ignorant of something they just discovered and are very indignant about.

Hot takes

Movie spoilers

Unsolicited advice

Reminders of friends long-dead.

Reminders of friendships long-dead.

Trashing on people's airing of grievances on their own page with a high and mighty "Let people enjoy things." I dunno - maybe, let people vent about shit or just keep scrolling? Would you grab someone's lips in real life and say "Shh" to them? No? Then maybe you're the one who needs to "Shh." Let people express themselves on their own pages. A post is not an invitation to judge someone, just an invitation to share in their experience. Don't want to share in their experience? Unfriend or Unfollow. We shouldn't feel obligated to view everyone's content just because we're "friends."

The assumption that - because we’re connected on Facebook - we’re actually friends.

The impulse to think "Everyone else needs to be as outraged by [this] as I am! To the Facebook machine to prove how aware/woke I am!"

Pearl clutching "OMG, one tiny thing happened - my neighborhood must be going to hell!" posts on suburban citizen pages. Just share data about when your ibuprofen-sponsored kickball league is playing and shut up, please.

Posting about going somewhere and having some well-meaning person say, "Hey, I'll be going there, too! Let's hang out!" No no. If I had wanted to meet up, I would have sent an invite. 

Watching people give up their private information to social engineering scams and/or sharing nonsense that's easily debunked with minimal effort. 

Dehumanization. Facebook has done to the general populace what military training used to do to soldiers. If you view your “enemies” as less than human it makes them easier to destroy. 

False friends. People who sit there and quietly seethe at you for years, never telling you they have a problem with you. Then one day they just snap, berating you and attempting to publicly demoralize and assassinate your character. No one would do that face to face, but Facebook knows how much time those people spend looking at your posts (even though you don't) and keeps promoting your content to them until they can't handle it anymore and just blow up at you. Yeah, I don't need that.

The desire to post random annoyances as grievances. Then you have a whole discussion about something completely unimportant that frequently devolves into a battle involving self-righteous folks saying "Try to see things from others' perspectives!" without a hint of irony that they're refusing to see the event from the perspective of the person whining about it, and people insisting they have a right to be frustrated with that random stupid thing.

The shitheels who turn even the kindest or most innocuous posts into an opportunity to bash an unrelated group. E.g. "owning the libs"

Treating people like shit for asking harmless questions.

Perverts who constantly friend request people (particularly women) who have no interest in them.

People who are mean to my wife because we got married.

Things I will miss:

Sincere birthday messages. 

My wife's content (though I'm sure she'll text it to me).

Snarky takedowns of malignant trolls.

The even half-baked attempts at identifying missing stairs in the theatre community.

Giving the laugh react to well-placed GIFs.

Photos of my friends' trips and daily events.

Reminders of good times had.

Bear with me as this is a bit long…

I was listening to some music while typing this but I stopped it as I cannot fathom of what I am about to share.  I was thinking of a good way to start and I can’t think of any. I will be more serious as I always was. 

So I deactivated my Facebook –again, can’t even remember as I did that countless time. And can you guess why? My "depression"- uh oh. I used the wrong term, I guess the best thing that it describes what I am feeling now is insecurity and loneliness? Which I haven’t felt for quite a long time as I got a huge quantity of friends around. Not until they left me one at a time since I no longer have something to offer. Social media’s use for me is to connect with people I value. But whom am I going to connect with when they already left me hanging?

Is it insecurities, why? Is it because they have sort of things in their life that doesn’t involve me? Maybe. Or much more or an obligation? Whenever I clicked that log in button it felt like I am being responsible on how everyone’s day go. It felt like I am slaved by the “LIKE” button. As it was like a mandated duty to give thumbs up on every posts that does not relate to me or neither my interest. It felt like I was living throughout every lie that's covered by the statuses, emojis and photos. That maybe I used the term “depression” to make it through the bandwagon and be on trend. But at some point, I did let myself get fooled.

It is an already 2 years old article as the author Salim Virani mentions and also notices that there is a surge of interest about it in a recent tweet (8 jan 2017) “I wonder why my Facebook privacy post (from years ago) is seeing a wave in popularity over the last week. Any ideas?”

Perhaps the latest “revelations” of inquisitive governmental old habits have something to do with this?

Salim Virani has updated the article “2017 update: A lot of these concerns I had have proven true. Facebook has been consistent with its pattern of contempt for its users. I’ve updated this with a few more points and links.”

Editorial cartoon by Ludovic Pujol

I joined Facebook in 2005 or early 2006, back when it was still a site that you had to be part of a university to join. There were only a dozen or so of my friends even on Facebook at the time. Over the next couple of years, I slowly saw my friends join one by one and before I knew it it was this huge thing. But I’m not on some hipster rant about how I’m cooler than you because I joined Facebook before you and left before you as well. This isn’t about that. This is about being honest with myself about why I needed to leave Facebook.

It happened when I was in the hospital.

More specifically, my daughter was in the hospital, and I was there with her. Over the years I had acquired a distaste from the mundane nature of Facebook and questioned its worth. I’m pretty sure most all Facebook users do the same thing. But I always stayed on the site because of some sick curiosity, disguised with excuses about how I wanted to stay in touch with my ‘friends’. I also wanted to remain in-the-know when it came to social networking so that I could help my daughter navigate its turmulous (I don’t think that’s a word, but it should be) and potentially life shaping environment as she goes through her awkward and vulnerable years.

I found myself checking my Facebook feed one evening while my daughter was in a coma on a breathing machine, and it sort of just smacked me in the face. What the fuck am I doing? Why do I care what some pseudo-friend of mine cooked for dinner? Why do I care about any of it at all? My life was so fucked up at that moment that the musings on Facebook seemed painfully unremarkable to me. So much so that I just couldn’t look anymore. I remember looking out the hospital window, and closing my Facebook app. So I cancelled my account right then and there, and I haven’t looked back.

This was June of 2013, which is over a year by now, and I have no intention of going back.

Months later, I came across this quote by Marcus Aurelius. Now, if you don’t know your history, Marcus was a roman empire from the year 161 to 180 AD. Yeah, a long time ago. He was a powerful emperor but also a stoic philosopher that left a lasting impression on humanity at the time, and arguably, even to this day. At least for me he has. Because the quote below perfectly describes why I left Facebook.

“Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbours, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming—in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the Ruler within you – means a loss of opportunity for some other task. See then that the flow of your thoughts is kept free from idle or random fancies, particularly those of an inquisitive or uncharitable nature. A man should habituate himself to such a way of thinking that if suddenly asked, ‘What is in your mind at this minute?’ he could respond frankly and without hesitation; thus proving that all this thoughts were simple and kindly, as becomes a social being with no taste for the pleasures of sensual imaginings, jealousies, envies, suspicions, or any other sentiments that he would blush to acknowledge in himself. Such a man, determined here and now to aspire to the heights, is indeed a priest and minister of the gods; for he is making full use of that indwelling power which can keep a man unsullied by pleasures, proof against pain, untouched by insult, and impervious to evil. He is a competitor in the greatest of all contests, the struggle against passion’s mastery; he is imbued through and through with uprightness, welcoming whole-heartedly whatever falls to his lot and rarely asking himself what others may be saying or doing or thinking except when the public interest requires it. He confines his operations to his own concerns, having his attention fixed on his own particular thread of the universal web; seeing to it that his actions or honourable, and convinced that what befalls him must be for the best – for his own directing fate is itself under a higher direction. He does not forget the brotherhood of all rational beings, nor that a concern for every man is proper to humanity; and he knows that it is not the world’s opinions he should follow, but only those of men whose lives confessedly accord with Nature. As for others whose lives are not so ordered, he reminds himself constantly of the characters they exhibit daily and nightly at home and abroad , and of the sort of society they frequent; and the approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.” – Marcus Aurelius