Domesticating Zuckerberg’s Beast

Like so many, probably many of you reading this, I have a love/hate relationship with social media – namely Facebook. Excuse me, “Meta.”  And since it’s likely that one or two of you are here thanks to a link posted on Facebook, I’ll admit to a certain level of hypocrisy right out of the gate. But trust me, the scales tip more heavily towards the “hate” side of things. 

Even today, thirty years since buying my first computer and logging on, I remain a fan of the internet and what it offers us in terms of knowledge, commerce, and communication. IHowever, like Pandora’s box, each of those three have had a lot of bad accompanying the good. But it’s the last one, communication, and social media’s role in it, that I want to focus on. 

The evolution of electronic communication goes back further than 1996 of course, but for the average user like myself, it started with email and ICQ, the latter of which had already started falling to the wayside when I logged on to what was then known as America Online. And let’s not forget my personal favorites, the  internet forums and message boards. All of these offered the ability to communicate in real time with people all around the globe. It’s still amazing when you stop and think about it. Then we met everyone’s mutual friend Tom on his platform, MySpace, and for a while it felt like that was as good as it could get. In a lot of way, it really was. 

Then Mark Zuckerberg took the best of all of those various features, wrapped them up into one website, and for a time it was limited to college campuses. Then in 2006 it became available to the world. Though I fought it as long as I could, it quickly became evident that Facebook was about to nudge MySpace aside. So in late 2008 I joined the crowd and signed up. 

In the early days, it was just a fun and silly thing to do, at least on the surface. But as the saying goes, “When the product is free, you’re the product,” and in recent years we’ve learned all too well exactly what that entails when it comes to social media. Yet despite that, so many, myself included, continue to use it. I’m sure there’s a large number of people who know that their data is collected and sold, know that they have no real privacy and are perfectly okay with sharing their lives on social media for all to see. I’ve grown pretty uncomfortable with all of that, myself. 

My intention isn’t to list my grievances with Facebook here, but suffice it to say they are legion. So many that not so long ago I told myself it was time to remove it from my life entirely. Delete it and walk away. The problem with that is there’s still some hobby oriented groups I enjoy. It’s also a platform that an estimated three billion people use on a monthly basis. So if you’re involved in just about any kind of endeavor, that’s where your target audience is to be found. I tried making a go of this without using Meta and without it, you may as well not bother. So I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m stuck using it. Not that Meta makes it easy to do so. 

So the next best thing to do was to cowboy up and saddle break the softheaded sumbitch until it worked for me, not the other way around. Or at least as much as I could make it so. 

Personal privacy was the first and foremost concern. Largely beacause based on past experiences, the security of our home is always on my mind. But also, as time has gone by, personal privacy means more to me. I have boundaries and a comfort level when it comes to who knows what, particularly when it comes to complete strangers. Also, the slightest thing can set someone off anymore, and the next thing you know you’re being broadcast all over the internet. So I locked the privacy settings down as tight as I can. There’s not much the public can get from what’s visible there. 

The next step, and arguably the most difficult one, was trimming down the friends list. For some, having a thousand or more people with access to your life may not be a problem. But for me it is, and has been, since I first got on there. It’s about what I’m comfortable with and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable about some things. My criteria for this wasn’t easy to come up with, but once I established a criteria, I pared that down as well. 

And look, I know someone might think I’m an asshole for doing something like that. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure I can explain it in a way to make someone understand my reasoning, but rest assured it was done without malice. I have dear friends who don’t have Facebook at all. Their lack of social media presence doesn’t diminish the relationship. To me, it’s the same with many of those formerly but no longer on there – whatever the relationship was before, it hasn’t really changed any in my mind. And besides, if you really know me, you know how I can be sometimes and understand, at least as much as anyone can. 

Getting Mark’s monster under control has been, and is likely to remain, a work in progress. There’s still a lot about it I despise and I do my best to avoid those. And it isn’t just Meta that I’ve been bringing to heel. I’ve also limited or removed other social media platforms from my life as well over the past couple of months.

Because in the end, there’s simply too many far better ways to live one’s life than to waste time watching how other people are living theirs. 

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