A social media maven – and friend – Annalis Clint – just gave me a talking-to about breaking up with Facebook as my go-to, how’s-everyone-doing way to feel connected now that I’m a pandemic social hermit. Oh, but my guts are woven into it. Her point, exactly.
How do I love you, Facebook, let me count the ways:
- It’s my pulpit. I speak my mind. Craft soulful homilies. As Annalis pointed out, these disappear in an instant. If I “homilied” here on my blog, they’d persist. And maybe be read by more people, though Facebook lures me into believing that I could hit the jackpot and reach thousands.
- It’s my kaffee-klatch. My friends are there. Not a private list, but mutual follows. We celebrate wins, announce deaths, grieve, tell funny stories, shuttle love back and forth, knitting us together. But duh! a lot of my friends are not on Facebook. Like Annalis.
- It’s my listening post. I follow very interesting people and prune my feed to see their posts. A 15 minute scroll gives me the illusion I’ve heard the heartbeat of the world – and I hope others scrolling feel the same about my posts. But I’m just as siloed as the people I say are stuck in their bubbles. I could subscribe to a range of online journalists with a range of points of view and get a similar hit from my Updates tab on Gmail.
- I hide out in the fleeting nature of the platform. If I say something stupid, it evaporates like water on a hot sidewalk. If I do the same here, I get egg permanently on my face. I’m more willing to think out loud over there, but here I think it needs to be, tada! significant and eternally true. #IcallBS.
- I once lived with a group that had a strong leader. We’d circle up in the evening to discuss the events of the day. I came to feel I’d outsourced my autonomy of thought, and left. But whatever in me wants other people to do my thinking for me apparently never left me. I think she circles up on Facebook.
Moving Wisdom :: Moving Words
My intention for 2022 and however long I live is to use my love of elegant language and my way of thinking-in-systems to bleed sanity, clarity and love into our unmoored society. I will do that here and everywhere my words are spoken or written, and if I am wrong about something, let’s talk here. I call this intention: Moving Wisdom :: Moving Words. It’s my drop in our shared bucket. It’s really what I’m good for, and if my words resonate in the minds of decision makers, all the better. Certainly my podcast, What Could Possibly Go Right? is right up there with moving wisdom :: moving words. It’s a moving feast of cultural scouts, people who see far and serve the common good.
#FBLite
How I will use this blog now:
I’ll try a new hashtag, #FBLite, to post here what I would have there. It will trick my mind into thinking I’m still over there chatting.
I’ll trust you to understand that these #FBLite posts are top of the head, not deeply considered.
I’ll risk that people who love #yourmoneyoryourlife or #blessingthehandsthatfeedus or @whatcouldpossiblygorightpodcast will be horrified by my eclectic and sometimes erratic (full of errors) thinking and… what… unfollow me? Or be mean… just the way they are on Facebook, right?
And I’ll use the tools Annalis suggests to post these words automatically to my social media without me going over there, just to post it, just to take a peek, just to read reactions to my last musings…
But I will never leave *YOU*…
However, there are several communities I will not abandon:
Buy Nothing Whidbey knits us together in mutual aid.
Socially Conscious FIRE where the thousands of people who approach financial independence the way I do – as liberating time to serve the common good – hang out. Most posts are from people who invest socially responsibly, build non-monetary capital, critique capitalism, and seek practical ways to ethically engage with consumerism and capitalism while challenging and changing it.
Deep Adaptation where unflinching conversations about social and environmental unraveling/ collapse are held, and grief and finding our way as systems collapse is the tenor.
And, living on an ferry-dependent island where power outages happen, I’ll still visit the Alert groups to get the latest and find out what that BOOM or howling was about.
In true Millennial + Gen Z mode, I’ll remind you to Comment, Share and Subscribe. If you are not on my mailing list, and want to get updates on my work and thoughts, join here.
After writing this I got Ken Homer’s eloquent and more detailed statement about leaving Facebook, if only for a while. It’s very well reasoned. Consider this. If Facebook were a country, it would be the biggest on earth. 2.85 billion people. An autocratic cotton candy country controlled by one person, Zuckerberg. Enough to have me cross my heart about this intention and press publish.
Vicki, frankly it surprises me that you hadn’t “seen” this FB before. Where have you been?
Oh I’ve seen this! But it did not stop me from relying on Facebook for a bundle of needs. I use many mainstream systems that are not built for the well-being of all, but are the coin of the realm here – from air-travel to banking. We all titrate participation in the multiple evils (degradation of the commons, enabling the rich to get richer, exploitation, dominator societies) of this world. We slide on the scale between purity and participation, disengaging and engaging. And we build new platforms, communities, monies, systems of exchange, stewardship of land, social relationships even as we inhabit the old as long as necessary. I hate and love this, the tip-toeing, the creativity, the moral dilemmas that are whetstones for the soul. RE FACEBOOK, today the slider switch turned to just shy of off.
All good reasons to leave FB! I have had similar thoughts, but can’t quite bring myself to do it, at least not yet. Too many nieces and nephews I’d rarely get to see ….. too many opportunities to scatter a little light and love that could open a heart a little wider, especially within the Peace Vision private page. Please do keep me signed onto your blog and let us all know how this is going for you. Wishing you a bountiful bouquet of opportunities to express yourself in all the ways that inspire you and all who resonate!
I am still pro facebook. Anyone who wishes can go to my page and scroll down to see everything I have posted going way back. I just looked at a post from 2016 as a test.We have a separate family group page for family kind of stuff which leaves me free to use my account as a smart website as I seed the bots with my rhetoric on a system understanding of the human predicament. I can interact with several groups of my choosing (some that the bots suggest) and have met many brilliant thinkers to now engage with. I can share charts for information and as place holders of my thoughts and commentary for retrieval to post in other forums.
precisely how i have used it, but… am i really so conscious as to not fall into the pitfalls. Siloed thinking. Reactivity. Using it as a distraction and getting caught longer than i mean to. Falling into indignation when a good and smart friend posts something incendiary. Posting links before I dig into their veracity thus encouraging the Truth-Lite world. Did it contribute to the systemic anger that built up over the Trump years, and reactivity to people about whom I think, “How can they think that?” Did it activate my loyal soldier, ever ready to fight even though the war is over? I find my mind is less able to concentrate – is that from the nature of social media in general? Can I think and read more deeply apart from it? I’m not quitting the internet. I can go out and find what I need. And I can talk to y’all here and through my email list. Am I asking others to meet me in a public square that isn’t public – and exposing them to the algorithms of addiction? It really has become a pandemic buddy. And I’ve loved it for all the reasons I cite. But I want to withdraw from Second Life into Real Life and it may cause some withdrawal anxiety but hey, I’m up to it and I’m actually excited by what I will discover. Plus… note that I will have reasons to dip into specific groups that do enliven and inform my thought and help me work through complex perceptions and questions. Just not the other parts.
I love this. Welcome to world fbLite. The water is fine–and less toxic for your soul. For me, during Covid Tymes I have had hunger for social connection and found that I went to fb looking for a snack. Most of what I found was junk food, so I was still hungry looking for more but never nourished. So I broke up. The app has been uninstalled, and I only periodically visit since I only need a taste.
For a while there was a twitch. Once I was off facebook, I realized the low level anxiety that was ever present, but I only realized it’s contribution after I broke up. Dear facebook, It is not me, it is you.
Left FB years ago. Figured that I didn’t need it before it was there so just because it was available wasn’t a logical reason to hang on to something that could never replicate the authenticity of real relationships.
Facebook is the only venue many of my friends and relatives use for communication. They don’t email. {Personally, e-mail is my favorite go-to. You have that address}. Members of the younger generation do not like to use their voice on their phones; they will only text short msgs. Their photos are all over FB, and that rather scares me, knowing that so many hackers with nefarious intent are out there, and these people are telling the cyber universe all the minutiae of their lives.
So, with resignation, I stay a FB user in order to keep in touch with many folks who otherwise wouldn’t communicate.
I find the “Meta” morphosis much more sinister. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAL2JZxpoGY. And then there’s “Alter Ego” auditions appearing on the entertainment scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2UgmPzIITI
[There are four nights of auditions on four separate YT videos if interested].
Heading for the Matrix permanently? Not sure what I’ll do, since I don’t wanna pack an AK47, and am too arthritic for those martial arts moves to combat this stuff. :>D Stocking up on red pills along with all my vitamin supplements, though!!
An issue which I wish to commend you for, Vicki, is your desire to change the world for the better. But, at the same time, I am inclined, in a Debbie Downer kind of way, to believe that whatever format/platform you use, you will most likely only attract like-minded “yes” people, and won’t have that much power to hold sway over people changing their opinions.
Example: I have a niece whose boyfriend’s family member posted holiday photos on FB of their small family get-together where she was wearing a mask, in between sips of her alcohol and puffs of her cigarette and mouthfuls of her junk food. The photos were all of smoke-filled rooms akin to jazz club/gin joints in the 1920s. What do you think would be her response if I were to point out the incongruity of her efforts to have a piece of cloth protect her from a respiratory illness while enjoying all the rest of those counter-intuitive practices? I would be lambasted as a … well, you can imagine. {Same as pointing out how un-health oriented a “Joints for Jabs” pogrom is. But I did rail against the latter on Facebook. With the expected results}.
What I find most beneficial is not caring how many “likes” I get for expressing how I’ve come to certain understandings about certain topics based on rigorous research, but to put it out there regardless. Knowing that is my best, and maybe sole, defense against social media propaganda propelled by memes and ignorance.
thanks for the kudos for wanting to make the world a better place and the caution about my silos. indeed. which is why i’ve started a practice of writing letters to the editor. for sure we are not all in agreement on this island. also liked your typo “… well, you can imagine. {Same as pointing out how un-health oriented a “Joints for Jabs” pogrom is.”
It took me three tries, but I left Facebook for good about two years ago and it has transformed my inner world. So amazing to hear MY OWN voice again instead of the clanging mish-mash of a zillion competing voices. I don’t want to demonize the platform. It offered a wonderful way to keep in touch with far-flung friends and connect with those who share my varied interests. Sometimes I do feel a sting of longing when yet another group I’m involved with hosts a compelling event or workshop that’s Facebook only, but I know better than to take that first taste! Also, for full disclosure purposes, it wasn’t until I gave up television and enjoyed that initial hushing of external stimuli that I was able to successfully let go of Facebook (and Twitter). So congratulations, Vicki! Savor the extra time you’ll have to explore and refine your own one-of-a-kind voice.