I hate facebook, facebook is my duty

[ironymaiden]

I loathe facebook, but I visit more than once a day. it makes me angry pretty much every time.
people i used to keep up with here are there. my brother and other family members are there.

i hate the design, the algorithm that destroys chronology and guesses what I want. lately, that seems to be memes and conflict. it makes me hate humanity, and the credulous strident progressives are just as bad as my racist cousins and the gamergaters.

it's my own fault.

I used to filter out shit i didn't want to see. i don't watch tv news, i don't listen to the radio very much. I get my national / world news from the Economist and a very carefully curated reddit account; the local from a fistful of blogs (since the Stanger jumped the shark).

but i know that means that i have protected myself completely from disagreement and othered people who don't share my worldview. so i read facebook to stay exposed. I've stopped muting posts. and after the Charleston shootings, i decided that i *do* have to engage. it's literally the least i can do. but that means that fb will feature shit that calls for correction, because then i click and comment more. slowly my entire comment history will consist of disagreement, corrections, and links to Wikipedia, Politifact, and Snopes.

i would invite more people here, but this journal has never been for my blood family. much of my old community here has shifted to fb. some social groups use fb as their primary method of contact - they don't email/chat/text at all. and for better or worse, the people i need around to keep me grounded in reality aren't erudite or engaged enough for long-form writing on a sometimes arcane platform.

I'm going to keep coming back and writing here as much as i can. the only thing holding me back is the shit mobile app.

tl;dr facebook like getting allergy injections, i wish this local organic honey was more effective

Comments

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is pretty much how I feel about FB.

[buhrger]

as the space hippies said to spock, "we reach"

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I understand. I feel like, when I go to FB, it's all about sad puppies and cancer and toxic politics. Every time I point a friend to LiveJournal, I get told how adorably quaint I am (a remark I've often gotten for using a Moleskine calendar rather than my iPhone, too)--and yet they visit LJ and say, gee, how nice to get thoughtful updates. Hm...perhaps there's a connection.

[varina8.livejournal.com]

I have an ambivalent relationship with FB. I got on it initially to keep up with former colleagues and my grad school cohort, then the family members started showing up. Over the last few weeks, I've been filtering more and that seems to help.

But, yes, I too miss the long thoughtful journal posts that used to appear on LJ so regularly back in the day.