Online Isolation

This year I decided to quit Facebook for Lent.

I was raised Catholic but I'm not particularly religious* and don't often observe Lent but it's a handy time to consider your behaviours and indulgences if the mood takes you and I had been spending faaaaar too much time staring blankly at social media.

It isn't as though anything particularly Earth-shaking was happening on Facebook, there weren't many people posting huge life events and the stuff they were sharing ran from interesting and/or amusing to repetitive and/or boring.
The stuff that was happening on Facebook wasn't the real problem, it was the 'maybe something interesting will happen, better keep checking' impulse.

This impulse first manifested itself earlier in my life as 'maybe the next music video on Rage won't suck so much' and could lead to sitting up until 2am until I realised that the odd video that I enjoyed wasn't really worth the shit ones I was sitting through to get to them.

So when I really took the time to notice that I was wasting an inordinate amount of time checking, hitting refresh, and scrolling about on Facebook just in case something of note happened I figured this was a good chance to stop with that shit and have a crack at actually doing something myself.

Some people reacted with surprise when I said I was doing it, warned me I'd miss out on things, said they wouldn't be able to do it themselves and then looked sly so I know when I log back in there will be hundreds of notifications awaiting me because everyone I know is a bastard.

Other people, who have militantly resisted joining Facebook, took me into their arms like a long-lost loved one who had escaped a cult and spoke to me soothingly of how much bullshit I'll be freeing myself from and how I'll no longer be providing free market research for an unloving corporate monster.

The reaction that really stunned me was when people found out that I was still using Twitter.

"But that's CHEATING!" they cried. "You might as well not have bothered!"

Uh, no, I gave up Facebook because I was wasting time waiting for it to produce results.
Twitter is interesting and a lot quicker to flick through, harvest and step away from.

Besides, it was like telling people you're giving up coffee and then having them incensed because you're still drinking tea and hot chocolate.

"Next time," they declared, "You should give up the whole internet! Do it properly!"

Give up the internet for 40 days?

Yes, I'm sure I could but it would make life a lot more difficult in some fairly key ways.

I do all my banking online, phone books are no longer physical, research for travel or restaurants or events or even my work would be made almost impossible.

It wasn't so much that they thought I should give up the whole recreational aspect of the internet that took me aback, it was the fact that they already assumed that was what I was doing.

As if giving up Facebook meant giving up the internet.

As if Facebook was the internet.

I hadn't known until then that that's the way a lot of people see it. That Facebook is the only part of a vast sea of information that they have regular and intimate contact with.

It's both fascinating and a little bit worrying.

I know I am missing out on a few things because once people have announced things on Facebook they forget to say things in person but it's made conversations a lot more engaging because when I talk to people now they have news to share which I haven't heard, even if they have to be prompted to remember I won't know it yet.

When you're on Facebook you have a lot of conversations that go:
"Hey, what've you been up to?"
"Oh well I've got that new job."
"Oh yeah, you put up that big post about it."
"...Yeah."
And that's it.
Because you already know.

I've sent and received a lot more text messages and emails since I've been off.

People have casually mentioned how much more effort it is remembering to forward things separately if they want to share with me, not in an accusatory fashion, but in surprise as if they hadn't realised how much they depended on Facebook to inform people, to arrange meetings and events, and even as a primary medium for private messages.

Apart from ease of communication, I haven't particularly missed it, and I have really enjoyed how much my being absent from it has bugged some people.

When I go back I think I'll be a lot more casual about it, at least I hope I will be.
It might take a few deliberate reminders to keep me from falling into old ways.

In the meantime I'll enjoy the next... 28 days of freedom and prepare myself for the ridiculous deluge of tags and posts that the assholes I lovingly call friends have carefully curated for me in my absence.

And I'll have to work out whether I want to suppress or foster the urge to write smug posts about my time away, partly as revenge for all the tags they'll have accosted me with and partly because, like everyone I know, I am essentially a bastard.



*My beliefs in marriage equality and assumptions that a divine being would have better things to do than keep a list of things he doesn't want you doing to each other's fun bits keeping me from embracing organised religion too closely.

Fertility Conspiracy

Facebook, I understand that you data mine us and then try to sell us things.

That's practically a given.

But either you're really bad at targeted ads, or you're a complete bastard.

I mean, I was cross enough at the WiiFit when it started flinging thinly veiled insults my way but this?

OK, so my Facebook profile says that I enjoy certain kinds of music, so you put ads for different bands and related items on my sidebar.

My profile says I'm a certain age so you make other assumptions from that and mix in a few other ads about 80s cartoons and band reunions.

It also says I'm single and I'd gotten used to all the sidebar spots that were devoted to advertising various dating websites.

Then you gave up on the regular, run of the mill dating sites and started advertising almost exclusively that I should give single dads a chance.

I'm sure there are lots of single dads out there who are great guys who deserve a loving partner and what not but the way the ads are presented gave a very 'And hey, who are they to be picky? You've got them over a barrel!' vibe which I found somewhat creepy.

And when I didn't click on any of those either, Facebook, you took it a step too far.

Why are you showing me ads about IVF information sessions, Facebook?

Yes, I'm single.

Yes, I'm 28.

But no, I have not yet reached the turkey baster stage of life.

So if you want me to keep pretending that you're a social networking site and not the elaborate marketing research tool that you are, you will drop the IVF ads and I won't have to go completely effing mental on you.

Scourge of the Internet

The first boyfriend I ever had got married the other week.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not being overcome by feelings of sorrow or jealousy or a case of 'oh if only it were me's - he got married wearing a black shirt and a pink silk tie, with a pink silk handkerchief in his breast pocket - I am not sorry that I passed on that particular relationship.

What I am miffed about here is the fact that I know about it at all.
Because he found me and 'friended' me on facebook just in time to post a whole bunch of awful pictures of people I don't know doing the macarena as he and his elvis hair-do cut a cake with his new wife.
I know I am partially to blame, I could have just clicked the 'ignore' button and wandered away but there's something about all these damn sites that wakes the secret masochist/stalker in all of us.
We all want to know what happened to people we used to know, depending on the reason we don't know them any more we may be dancing up and down with our fingers crossed to find out that they're doing really badly, but I think overall we're better off not knowing.

Now anyone you have ever met who can remember your name can search for you and try to reintroduce themselves into your lives, you can do the same and the next thing you know you may be carefully sifting through their online profiles on a regular basis. Healthy!

The safest option would be to just opt out of whole deal but it's so addictive!
Even if you really did just join because it was the easiest way to keep up with people you'd met travelling yadda yadda yadda odds are you will either turn into twitchy-internet-stalker-person or you will be buried under an avalanche of special applications.

Add the 'werewolf' application, add the 'vampire' application, add the 'vampire vs werewolves vs robot monkey ninja pirates' application, join an interest group which hosts support conversations for people with issues about the schizophrenic nature of being both a vampire and a werewolf involved in a factional battle...

The simple and easy fun is suddenly getting more and more complicated and more and more of a hassle and I'm getting paranoid about what other forgotten shreds of my past are going to come searching for me.
Luckily I have a terrible memory and have been saved from the occasional drunken urge to do a broad spectrum search by the fact I sometimes think a person's name started with an R when it actually started with a T and so on and so forth.

The underlying problem is that we all want to know what is going on with other people but we don't necessarily want them to know what's going on with us. And whilst hearing a snippet of gossip from someone who knows someone who knows someone might kick off an interesting conversation, trawling the interwub all by yourself in the glow of your monitor just kicks off a whole raft of problems you really don't need.

One day I may manage to kick the facebook habit but until then I think I'll just go and draw some big curly villain mustaches on all the wedding photos with MS Paint.*



*Oh I know I sound all bitter but that's because we parted spectacularly in a fit of teenage passion and now a good eight years later he's come giggling up via the electronic medium and made me think about him again! I had other plans for those memory sectors of my brain dammit!