A few years ago, I deleted my Facebook account. There were many reasons for this, which I detailed at the time. Basically, I had major issues with their privacy policy and completely lost trust with the company. I got out because I no longer wanted to be their product.
Unfortunately, the network effect that makes social media sites so much “better” as their user base grows also makes it that much harder to stay away from them once they get huge. I got a new Facebook account back in 2015 to stay in touch with a local group of friends who planned all their social events that way, and dabbled with the idea of coming back. In the end, I decided not to and deleted that account when it was no longer useful, right before the elections really started to heat up. Perfect timing.
Last week, I bit the bullet and went back onto Facebook, because again there’s a local group of friends who plan everything exclusively on Facebook, and I found myself missing out on things because I was out of the loop. This time, though, I’m friending absolutely no one and keeping my usage of the site to a minimum. If I were moving back to Utah tomorrow, I’d delete my account before I packed my stuff.
I’ve noticed some interesting things since getting back on Facebook.
First, the site is a mess. It’s like a weird cross between Goodreads and MySpace. I know there’s a lot of people who love Goodreads, but sorry, that site is almost impossible to navigate. Way too much clutter, with the option you’re looking for hidden in some tiny link that doesn’t actually look like a link. Unless you’re a frequent user, you constantly feel like you’re lost. That’s Facebook now. It’s very unfriendly for new users, which I know is like me and ten people living in Yurts in Mongolia, but still. In terms of user-friendliness, it’s going the way of MySpace.
Second, Facebook has become really slutty. Again, first impressions here. It’s really interesting when Facebook has nothing to base their algos off of. I assume from what I’m seeing that the recommendations default to its power users, which at a cursory glance are mostly chicks and dude bros. Also, some of the group recommendations I’m seeing are insanely over the top in terms of sheer raunchiness. Since when did Facebook turn into Potterville?
Third… why are there multiracial emojis now?
Diversity is not a virtue in and of itself. It has to be paired with common values. Diversity without any common values is a state of war.
But Joe, what’s the harm in an emoji that reflects your skin tone? Two things. First, social media divides us far more than it unites us. It walls us off into tribes, helping us build our own custom echo chambers full of people who only agree with us. It’s an incubator for much of the divisiveness in society right now. Second, there is a very real effort in the country today to divide us all by race.
In society at large, we have very little in common anymore. If we can’t even agree on facts, how can we agree on values? A nation without common values is only a major crisis away from a civil war.
So call me paranoid, but these multiracial emojis are, in my humble opinion, a sign of a very disturbing trend. Either Facebook is simply giving the market what it wants, in which case society is much closer to the edge of the cliff than I’d realized, or Facebook has an agenda. Best case scenario, Facebook is simply responding to a small but vocal minority of their power users, and the rest of us don’t care. Not great, but not the end of the world (yet).
Fourth, and perhaps most disturbingly, people seem to be so plugged into Facebook that when they meet in real life, the conversation often defaults to whatever someone posted that they all saw. This is especially true of people ten years younger than me. I know it’s anecdotal, so I shouldn’t extrapolate it into a general trend. What I can say is that after moving to a new place and making a new group of friends, I’m seeing this a lot more than I used to.
The thing that makes this disturbing is that the people who do this tend to be a lot less open or curious about those outside their immediate social group. They also tend to crave validation so much that they go along to get along. When every social media interaction is subject to a gladatorial-style thumbs up vote from everyone you know, is it any wonder that no one wants to step out into the arena unless they know that someone has their back?
In short, Facebook is becoming more toxic. What’s the antidote? Probably to read more books. That’s what Jeff VanderMeer suggests in his book BookLife, and I tend to agree. One of the best ways to unplug from the Internet is to curl up with a good book.
Thoughts?
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