NOVEMBER 10, 2019 – I’m angered, saddened, humored, flummoxed, flabbergasted, and fascinated by Facebook. To roil me further, someone reminded me recently that “What you see on Facebook is not the same as what I see on Facebook.”
Compared to most active FB users, I don’t have a lot of friends (383, according to FB, but if given a week, I doubt I’d be able to name more than 50 (closed-book)). Random checks of family and in-person friends reveal that they have comparatively high-volumes of FB friends.
Now, I can vouch for all or nearly all of my FB friends. They are a decent lot within generous bounds, and from what I observe, few bots have blotched my newsfeed with fake posts.
What I see via re-posts, however, are ample madness, stupefying ignorance, and outrageous outrage. My head spins as I read of this or that affront—or alleged affront; make that perceived alleged affront. Being an older guy, albeit with an intact memory of eras past, I often play a thought experiment involving myself, old acquaintances, ancient family members . . .
. . . I imagine myself comfortably seated side-by-side with one of the aforementioned. I open my laptop screen, wait for it to light up, move my finger over the fingerprint reader, watch the screensaver yield to my desktop, open my browser, key in FB, hit enter and see the magic unfold.
Just then I remember to steal a furtive glance at the transfixed face of the observer next to me—self, grandparent, friend, teacher. My eyes shift back and forth between screen and companion’s face as I scroll through my newsfeed, slowing, then stopping, here and there. I watch confused amazement turn to utter horror. “This is what we’ve—you’ve—come to?” my companion says.
The person vanishes. As my corneas reflect a bluish glow, I examine more closely, the glee and terror leaping off the screen—a news flash; a “meme,” a “memory,” a misnomer; an ad for this and one for that; a black cat racing down the gridiron; a crowd of angry Hong Kong demonstrators; the American president speaking in superlatives; a Congressman from Ohio talking indignant nonsense. After a time it all starts to look like the back end of a Waste Management truck (a pretty nature mural attached to each side) roaring 100 mph down our alleyway, knocking over garbage cans, crushing errant recycling bins, stripping trees of their lower branches, and creating such turbulence, nearby birds plunge head first into the ground.
When the dust clears, I take inventory of the shake-up: disturbances deep inside my brain and the dearth of originality within an invention unimaginable by anyone from an earlier era. But when all is said and done, the draw remains. Through the fumes of our condemnation of social media, most of us remain hooked to a line reeled 24/7 into Big Data, then processed, packaged, and consumed by Big Power.
We live upon an uncharted sea; a region without horizons and for which no map exists; a world where GPS provides no bearings.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
