The Interminably Obscene Timelines of Social Media

I'm probably on the spectrum (never officially diagnosed as far as I know), but I get sucked into projects rather easily. This means that other things around me become forgotten or go unnoticed for a while.

When Facebook first appeared, I got on it along with everyone else. It was a bit fun at first - connecting with friends and other people - but it has slowly degraded over time.

For a while, I posted some pictures every day, but I never stuck around to read or check the comments. Then, a number of years ago, I left. I keep the account open to check on some things every 4-6 months on average, but I tend not to comment or stay more than a minute or two.

Today, I checked and I have to say, the experience was overwhelmingly ugly, brutal, and bad.

It's a bit hard to put into words because most people I know still check their Facebook. So let me give you a corollary:

When I moved from NYC to San Francisco in December of 2001, I gave away my TV to a friend. Back then, most TVs were rather large, heavy, and unwieldy things which included a massive CRT. In San Francisco, I had other things on my mind and, since I had a computer, I went back to reading the news and not bothering with a TV.

I ended up not having a TV since 2001. Literally.

After moving to Arizona in 2005, I hadn't watched TV in a few years. Quite literally. A friend of mine put me up right after I moved, and I had my own guest bedroom with a TV in it. A day after arriving, I turned it on.

It was like a shock to the system. There were commercials. Loud commercials. I felt like someone was punching me in the face with solid bags of bullshit. It felt offensive in every way. I had forgotten what it was like and was unprepared for the assault.

You see, like everyone else born in 1970 and that era, I grew up with TV. In the 90s, in Washington DC, our TV was on all the time in the background. I had gotten used to it like everyone else but now, at that point, I wasn't anymore.

I found it so horrifically bad that I was convinced that either:

1. Advertisers had slowly been turning up the volume for years, and I had never adjusted for a few of those last ones or
   
2. It was always that rank and I simply was unused to it.
   

I think it was probably a combination of both.

That experience is what it was like scrolling through Facebook again. It happens, as I say, every now and then. And it's the same experience every time: Was it always that bad? I don't know. But it's very bad.

I imagine that this is what it's like to scroll through Twitter now. I left Twitter ages ago and I officially deleted my account the day that Elon Musk took over (like so many others). I find Bluesky to be interesting at times, but it's mostly all the same - ranting about this administration and the latest outrage. I rarely post. I'm sometimes on Mastodon too, and I've been trying to actively post a bit more in both, but I'll forget about them after a day or so because what I'm seeing there, I'm seeing everywhere in the news anyway. And what little there is that doesn't revolve around the outrages of topical politics is very sparse and mostly puerile.

Lemmy (the federated replacement for Reddit) is mostly the same: Politics and tech. While fascinating, it's again not what I always want to see. Posting won't actually do anything - especially if you live outside of the USA. Nobody cares. Marching in the streets might do something for a little while, but it won't really resolve the problem of an administration which is entirely criminal, ignores the Constitution, and will eventually put guns on the street to prevent anyone from ever taking their power away again.

So, as I scrolled through Facebook, I'm wondering: What will it take for people to abandon most of this crap? I'm all in for the Federated stuff - Mastodon, Lemmy, and even some Bluesky, but I'm not only interested in one topic.

I think one thing which helps me is the fact that I'm not hooked to my phone like most people. Why? Because I have a laptop and I prefer to use a laptop rather than a phone. A phone is useful, but most people don't use computers and their phone becomes everything they use. Such is not the case with me. I suppose I'm lucky in that respect.

There was a point to this post, but it has temporarily escaped the author's mind.

– N.