It has been an eventful few weeks in the life of your humble blogger. The most significant change is that our oldest is now a college student, so we had just a little bit of work planning, packing and eventually moving a teenager’s life 3 hours away. This shift in all our lives was more stressful than my starting a new job a few weeks ago. But somehow all of us managed the stress well, and we’re on the other side of these challenges and moving along gracefully.
But another significant change also happened in my life a few weeks ago. Through some combination of getting a new phone, setting up a work account on Facebook with the same phone number as my personal account, and surely some human error mixed in, I have been completely and utterly shut out of Facebook.
If you’re reading this, don’t try to contact me there, and please don’t send me to their help sections. I’ve tried absolutely everything, and I’ve found a number of people online who have experienced the same problem—being unable to get past two-factor authentication—and who have been shut out for weeks if not months. My only recourse is to upload a personal ID to an online form and hope that they receive it, and even that form is hard to find. Facebook doesn’t have customer support for non-advertisers. They don’t care if a few thousand people drop off when their accounts number in the 3 out of the 8.1 billion people on this earth.
Since this happened, I have spent too much time trying to find backdoors or solutions, to no avail. But I have also been pondering a semi-existential question: can a person like me—who likes to write, talk politics, and share pics of my kids and a whole lotta silliness—survive without Facebook? What will that world be like?
I’m learning right now.
On the one hand, it does feel like a big connection to the world has been cut off. The night before this happened, I had an extended Messenger conversation with a friend from high school whom I don’t talk with often enough, and we learned that our adult lives had a few more things in common than either of us knew. I would hate to think that he or any of my FB friends are reaching out and wondering, “Hey, what’s up with Lee? Is he sick? He’s usually not this…silent.” And my inability to share content has slowed my roll on this blog a bit, although I’m fine using the aforementioned college move as an additional excuse. Also, there’s so much happening in the news—so many indictments—that it’s rough not having an outlet for my schadenfreude.
On the other hand, I’m spending more time reading. I’m more focused than I’ve been in the recent past, on my kids, on the job, and on the future. Am I less stressed? With all the other changes, it’s hard to tell, but I think I am. I don’t have the continuous rise and fall of dopamine levels as a result of likes, laughs, and heart emojis.
I share a lot of my political views on Facebook, very forcefully in fact. I’m not shy about what I think is wrong with our world, as you’ll see in these blog posts. I am angry about what some politicians are doing to this country in the name of “protecting kids” or “protecting families” or “protecting borders” or “protecting religion.” I started this blog as an outlet to oppose hate, and I mean to continue it, however long I may be shut out of the largest social network out there and the primary one this old guy uses.
But we all know that expressing political opinions on Facebook is usually a matter of preaching to the converted. I know of only one close friend who is a Trump fan, and we spar on politics for a time and then retreat into our corners while saying, “Let’s agree to disagree.” I’ve known him since kindergarten, and I don’t want politics to be a reason to unfriend so close a friend. Fortunately, when he and I allow ourselves to calm down and approach our arguments rationally, I believe we do understand each other a bit more, even if we are diametrically opposed on 98% of the issues of our day. But this situation is actually rare.
I’ve been working on the commercial Internet since its earliest days, and I remember when the shift to using email came with the warning that it’s hard to convey emotion in an email. So we should think before we type, lest we come across in an unintended way. That type of filter has been completely obliterated in environments like Facebook. People put their shit out there often without consequence for others’ feelings. Many of us start off our posts with such warnings as “I don’t care if this is going to offend you,” or “If you don’t like this, you can unfriend me.”
My 91-year-old father is not on Facebook, thankfully, but when he and I talk politics, even though we agree on everything, after 10 minutes we have to stop because we’re so angry about the state of the world that we quickly get to: “Let’s stop talking. It’s getting our blood up.”
So if this is happening outside of Facebook, I’m left wondering if Facebook is merely a mirror of the problems in our society or a platform that is encouraging disagreement, anger, and political divisiveness. Now that I’m taking what seems like an extended vacation from the platform, I feel like it’s a little bit of both.
As a mirror, I believe Facebook reflects the divisiveness that our leaders (excuse me, politicians) capitalize on in order to win elections. In order to rile up your constituents and win a primary, you have to go for the jugular and stand against everything “the other side” is for. And most Americans play follow-the-politician instead of thinking for ourselves. Real leaders don’t encourage this. They say things like, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” or “Keep calm and carry on” or “We got this.” So Facebook is a reflection of the world that our so-called leaders have created for us, and a fish stinks from the head.
But Facebook also loves eyeballs, clicks, and engagement, and this type of social brinkmanship increases all of them. (To be fair, so do most major “old media” outlets.) So in this sense, Facebook encourages the world we find ourselves in: angry, at odds with “the other side,” and constantly griping about the state of the world, no matter what state or world you live in.
And so, after a few weeks of spending too much time trying to solve this technical issue, I’m going to relish it for a while and explore other pursuits. Maybe I’ll learn a new language, or maybe I’ll become a hacker to get back in. But because I need the fix, the jolt of dopamine, I’m sure I’ll re-engage soon, probably under a new account. At that point, I’ll measure whether I’m better or worse for it.
