When I first joined the site I can remember the thrill of reconnecting with old friends, and the disappointment of learning that one of my very best friends had walked on. There was a novelty to sharing photos and news with the family you used to only see at Christmas, or in the case of far away relations, at funerals. My news feed was often filled with happy news from near and far that an old friend had wed or birthed children, or moved to California.
Now I've come to expect a different kind of disappointment from Facebook. One that sinks in as one friend after another reveals personal beliefs so incongruent with your own you wonder how you had ever been friends. They break the news with some clever news post or advice column that offends you, but is lauded by their immediate family and close friends as the best thing ever. Your appalled, embarrassed, even angry that they could take this alternative position on the social issues of our times and ties must be cut; and they may be feeling the same way about you from their perspective. Some of them unfriend you, you unfriend some of them, the friends list narrows to family and those friends with whom you share enough common ground to tolerate. Still I held on to the habit of Facebook, saying I mostly just share photos with my family and play scrabble.
Recently I started feeling like I'm in that episode of Futurama when everyone caught brain slugs and started acting like mindless pawns as more and more people I'm actually related to are doing this same thing. It causes me a great deal of conflict to look at these relatives and wonder when they lost their minds, or how they came to think in these divergent ways. One post after another, my brother supports the Duck Dynasty guy (are you kidding me? That shit is fake), my cousin thinks women should show respect by ignoring their husband's flaws and surrendering to their every sexual request no matter what (I'm offended that I even had to type that), and I simply can't go on. So I quit. I deleted the app from my iPad and phone. And every time I thought about Facebook today I came up with another reason not to:
- Facebook was invented to simulate the college experience in an online setting so you could keep up with events at one party while attending another, or studying, I'm no longer in college and I don't have a social life worth simulating.
- I have the scrabble app on my iPad; I don't need Facebook to do that.
- I can read the latest news without my newsfeed. There's an app for that (channel3000, channel 7, huffington post, etc) too.
- When we moved to Madison I kept telling people about the "life by design vs. life by default" leadership lecture I listened to; I feel like I'm slipping into default: wake up, check email, check Facebook notifications, check Facebook newsfeed, etc.
- My "life by design" doesn't include wasting time on a silly website that simulates experiences when I can experience my kids in real time, right now. Nor does it include spending time on or with people I generally and genuinely dislike, even when they are related to me.
- I feel bad when I realize I don't like the person someone has grown up to become.
- I feel like other people might think this way about me.
- (1/12/2013) Jesse and I are trying to achieve some specific goals and stressing out about which of my relatives or remaining friends has most recently gone off the deep end doesn't further our goals.
While I can't unlearn the unpleasant truths about these people, I can go back to seeing them in person, in the chaos of holiday or sadness of funerals, on occasions, without having to get to know them, and dislike them on Facebook.
