Just 307 days ago, in October 2020, I resolved to abandon Facebook for all of 2021 and perhaps for ever! On New Years eve, that resolution was activated.
However, 162 days into that peregrination, I abandoned it in favour of rekindling the relief and life pleasures I draw from my social network, which is most active in Facebook.
How, then, can I reconcile the abandonment of such a principled stand against the evils of the platform and the people who exploit its users?
Simply put, I can sleep at night with my resolution’s dissolution due to my need to re-find happiness amid a plight I could not have predicted in Oct 2020 or even December 2020.
I deeply missed those 14 highly valued things I lamented leaving behind. Almost a year ago, the neotenic me and the adult me were both willing to trade them in for a principled position against the machine. And while my principles remain unchanged, my need for the value those 14 reasons provide me increased above my need to hold my one-man, two-eyeballed stand.
In my time as a deFacee, I did however I deprogramme, detoxify, desist, depolarise, decolonise, deactivate and deliver my one-person message #IamnotyourproductFacebook.
Importantly, I also read “The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health–And How We Must Adapt” by Sinan Aral. A fascinating read that helped me understand further the inner workings of the machine, providing useful insights into defences against its perils while (more safely) benefiting from its promises. My brief Goodreads review may interest you.
In the meantime, I’ve sought a Shakespearian sonnet to mark my return to Facebook (and to help me become a little more informed on things Shakespearian), and discovered the following (Sonnet 28), which describes a man struggling to conjure a younger man (himself or a friend from the past?) and grappling with work during the day and restlessness at night. Fitting, really, as I continue through my own tribulation by day and by night, with Facebook (ironically) one of my many sources of strength and support…
How can I then return in happy plight
That am debarred the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eased by night,
But day by night and night by day oppressed?
And each, though enemies to either’s reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day to please him, thou art bright,
And dost him grace, when clouds do blot the heaven;
So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou guil’st the even;
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.
William Shakespeare (1609)
Thinking Allowed 