A couple weeks ago, I went to see my pals John McAuliffe and Susan Levine (among other notables) at Giuseppe’s in Gloucester. I hadn’t seen Susan in quite a while, and we had a lovely chat, and afterwards, she “liked” me on Facebook, with the accompanying message, “I didn’t know you were on Facebook”.
Now, I do have a Facebook account. You can tell, because of the little blue “f” at the bottom of the homepage on my Web site. It’s like the Good Blogkeeping Seal of Approval, or something. I set up my Facebook page because someone – perhaps my friend Deb Cowan, but I ought to resist blaming her – suggested that it was one of the few things she found useful in Web marketing. I quickly gained about 100 fans, and there it’s stayed, sort of like the chair in the dining room that sits next to the wall in case extra guests ever show up.
It’s not even a real Facebook page, either. It’s just a fan page, which means that people can be my fans but I can’t be anybody else’s fan, or something. I couldn’t bring myself to go the distance. As my loyal fans are aware, Bleater and Blooper and Tweaker and Shamebook and the whole range of social media trigger my “you kids get off my lawn” muscle, which is oh, so much better toned and powerful than my “well, I guess that’s what everybody else is doing” muscle, which seems to have atrophied beyond the point of salvaging.
I have brutally neglected my Facebook page. If you go visit it, you’ll see a tired stream of stale updates for gigs that happened months ago – a trip back in time that does no one any good. It’s worse than useless – it makes me look like I’m dead, or sick, or somewhere in Antarctica. So, I think, I’m going to kill it.
Here’s the problem with Facebook: you have to feed it. It’s like a slavering Doberman, paws on your chest at five AM, demanding kibble, or the occasional heart of a vanquished enemy. That’s the way Facebook wants it: it wants you on its site, all day, every day, gossiping about Jen’s new haircut or looking for high school classmates who are fatter and more slovenly looking than you are or playing Farmcow or whatever the hell it’s called, buying virtual pig slop and shoveling virtual horse manure and all sorts of fun things like that. And Facebook wants to be fed because it’s selling you to whatever advertisers it can convince to be interested in the lucrative digital bovine market segment.
I’m less than happy with this business model. And I’m certainly less than happy with the prospect of spending yet more time in front of a screen, pressing little buttons that mold my preferences into prepackaged, digestible doses, in the same way that excrement can be converted into bricks. In fact, it kind of fills me with despair. And I can’t change it – I can’t make a “Tolerate” button, or a “You’re vaguely amusing, but not so much that I want to hear from you ever again” button, or a button that gives someone a hug (sorry, something mawkish slipped in there, won’t happen again). Facebook is not interested in the full range of human expression – it’s too messy, too hard to categorize, and way too hard to dice up into tiny cubes for its advertisers.
But wait, you say. Facebook feeds you, too. Look at all those wonderful connections you’re maintaining. And it’s true, not having to leave my home for small doses of snark, from people I sort of know, has its benefits. But I tend to prefer actually seeing or talking to people, strangely enough. And I keep thinking of that Doberman. Sure, he keeps you warm at night, and plays with you when you want (mostly), and craps on the lawns of people you don’t like (wouldn’t it be nice to have a button for that). But those friendly paws are a little bigger than you might prefer if you want to remain standing when he greets you, and then there’s the giant food bowl. Don’t forget: you have to feed it.
My old pal Island Girl is going to accuse me of animal cruelty here, because in her world, dogs are king. But not in mine. Bye, bye, Facebook, you insatiable beast. You can starve, for all I care.