Confessions of a first-time Facebook user

January 15, 2018 by Fred Allebach

I had managed to stay off Facebook until a few months ago, and I would probably still be off if not for a chance conversation with a friend who said there was some big local policy discussion happening and that he was following it. I love discussions like that, so I said to myself, I’m going to take the leap and not get left in the dust on local issues.

Now, after a bit of Facebook experience I have a few observations.

Endless call to action

In life there are many calls to action by others based on current events. Most people are aware of current events and they are going to do what they decide to do, or not. Facebook in one respect seems to be an endless exhortation to action for various causes. However, I am already active, know the news, and have needed to unfollow a lot of people because of the nature of their constant outrage and exhortations to act. If you want to act, act. Facebook is not acting. A two-minute news cycle is only going to drive people crazy and not allow any time for reflection. This may be why the whole crowd-sourcing thing comes on strong but just evaporates after, it’s shallow, no depth, no real relationships. It’s people as sheep rather than as thoughtful, volitional entities.

Local group sites

A couple of locals have group and community-focused Facebook sites where local issues are indeed vetted. These are valuable democracy-in-action forums, and fun to see, and to jump in on once in a while. I had wanted to see forums like this, however many times the people acting are motivated by a particular axe to grind. Any issue ends up having a particular set of protagonists and antagonists. My own policy here is to reserve the right to make my own enemies.

I happen to know multiple players around a lot of local issues, so a simple Facebook “like” or comment then appears to put me at odds with folks I know on all sides. On Facebook, no one has time to read a nuanced statement; there are about zero “likes” for anything over two sentences. And so, a simple “like”, what does that mean? I agree 100%?

Short attention span, lack of depth

As we jump on Trump for his shallow takes on things, here we all are manifesting the same exact behavior on Facebook; zero “likes” for anything over two sentences or that would require thought and reflection. For example, a detailed update of mine on where Sonoma is on climate change planning: one “like”, a picture of me in a suit jacket, 31 “likes.” So much for in depth discussion.

Run of the mill human stuff

Facebook’s strong suit is the mundane stuff, not the serious stuff. The more mundane, the more people “like” it.

The social side is fun

Family and old friends connections are great. It has been fun to get in touch with my cousins and other long-lost friends, and at that level, I really like it. I like some of my old friend’s science postings, other’s trips to Mexico, seeing what my cousin in Norway is up to building his new house in the winter. It’s fun to see a bit more about local people I didn’t know. But after I have seen these things, and it goes no deeper, it can start to amount to voyeurism. Someone is in the hospital… I don’t know them anyway, are they my “friend?”

And, like real life, it is easy enough to be disappointed on Facebook that you get no response from people you’d like to, and from people you have made bids to interact more with.

Meeting schedule is good

One good thing about Facebook is the “who’s going to what local meetings” function. That opens up real things that real people can go to in person.

Homo hierarchicus

I did not imagine that Facebook would part-ways be a complex forum of who is watching who more than who is saying what.

Somehow it is possible to see who has viewed a posting even if people don’t “like” anything. God knows how this happens or why, but this is creepy, like snooping in on who’s snooping. Are there advanced settings that allow you to manipulate the Facebook experience and set it so you can see who merely looked at your post? How does that get there?

With me or against me?

A “like” is not very nuanced. In real life, I can like various local-issue protagonists and antagonists at the same time. This represents my own hope, that humans can figure out, by being broad-minded, how to solve big issues. Yet at the same time, people are known for fighting, taking sides and getting embroiled in petty bullshit. This is the challenge of life, and of politics, to navigate choppy social waters.

Who is watching who and what people “like” on Facebook is a way to see what their tribe is, and where they fall out on the political/ values spectrum. Those you suspected of being one way or another, gets corroborated by seeing who they “like” and what they post. Facebook leaves a trail of posts, “likes” and “views” but exactly what these indicate is not certain. At the end of the day, interpreting “likes” and posts etc. on Facebook, as with many things, the Golden Rule is a good barometer. Some will count up likes as indicating if you are on one team or another…

Trafficking in bits of social info

What is being trafficked on Facebook is bits of social information, but we never get into the control room of each actor to see their real heart of hearts and what they want, intend or mean. It’s enough social information on Facebook to be compelling but not with enough depth to have heart or be authentic. Facebook is like fake sugar.

How you frame your Facebook page and selectively present yourself ends up being a kind of false, magical view, like make up. People are good at this anyway, yet Facebook is like giving white sugar to bees, they really go for it, but it’s not good for them; it’s not the real deal.

On the road to virtual reality

In one sense Facebook is an initial step to virtual reality and a separation from actual face-to-face social reality. It makes relating into a kind of comic book. Facebook could be a way to save on greenhouse gas transportation impacts, because you don’t have to travel anywhere to relate to other people. Like 1984, Brave New World or The Matrix, the context is already being manipulated by Big Brother Zuckerburg, and so we fall into the same old human traps even as technology appears to advance. We can run but we can’t hide from our human nature.

Flies on sugar or shit?

People are attracted to this social media like flies on sugar because as supremely social creatures, we are made to suck this kind of thing right up, to figure where we stand in the social status hierarchy, and note who is saying what. Only now, we can be manipulated on it by billionaires with staffs of PhD advertising psychologists. The whole social media thing is highly monetized, and with human incentives towards monopoly control and manipulation anyway, this all becomes a house of mirrors of fake news and tribal/ personal mixed motivations.

Behind the curtain here is the same old shit, people in Silicon Valley motivated by greed and avarice, to make lots of money and have more power and control. The “tech revolution” has devolved from its great promise of positive, egalitarian transformation to just be more of the same human stuff.

I heard it through the grapevine…

For people you have already decided are not in your tribe, or who you just don’t like, you just don’t “friend” or “follow” them in the first place. If they are annoying, you can “unfollow”: them and still be “friends.” You can still snoop around, see their pictures etc. Like real life, you can choose to close off who you let in. Facebook is the perfect medium to play on many human tendencies, and it does it in a way divorced/ removed from its namesake, the human face and real people.

Evolution of letters to the editor and the comment section

First there were letters to the editor, and then digital comment sections. These both tended to be pretty hot mediums for stilted opinions. Editors filter it out. The local newspaper comment section tends to devolve into a pit of trolls. The Press Democrat comment section got so bad they had to password protect it for paying customers only. The I-T is a mini version of that, where an assortment of limited one-trick ponies opine endlessly, in frequently nasty and sarcastic ways, on the exact same ideological points. The Sun comment section is too hard to plug into, in this age of ease and low attention span, two clicks is one too many. It takes too long to sign in on the Sun comments for most people to put in the effort to say anything.

I had thought Facebook might be different. Guess again. Facebook is just a more sophisticated troll pit where we can modify our experience to only consume info from trolls we like, or we get to see what those trolls do at home with their dogs on the couch.

Facebook as supreme bubble modification

In today’s day and age where we can proscribe our own content, and only read and consume info we want to hear anyway, we can easily stay in our own bubbles and never have to deal with any nasty, contradictory trolls at all. This can be done on Facebook by blocking people, by not friending, and by not following them.

People like it how they like it. Always have. Bubble tendencies, and a consciously fanned red state blue state consciousness divide, plus Facebook, cattle herds us into more partialized bubbles we can’t see out of. Enter the Russians and real, hard core power manipulation of electoral politics, and this starts to get dangerous!

Fake news is really classic human partial, tribal understanding

Facebook provides the perfect platform to create your own bubble of news and info, even as various Wizards of Oz behind it are manipulating you with their own idea of what bubble you are in, and laughing all the way to the bank, or to Trump as president. As mentioned, this is the first step to virtual reality. “Fake news” melded with identity politics is just the first symptom, as everyone cordons themselves off into partialized info bubbles and self-affirming tribes. Facebook makes this all a lot easier, hence Zuckerburg’s recent effort to change the algorithm to avoid fake news promulgation.

In the effort to stop fake news, everything becomes inauthentic and fake, subject to manipulation. This is not new, now it’s just collapsed into an addiction everyone is voluntarily choosing to take up. And expanded by an insane proliferation of news and content, that is so overwhelming, no one can control it or make sense of it all.

There is a link between Facebook and reality here. Local players watch the virtual realm closely, refer to it, and maybe call you out on the side for opinions that represent taking sides. It’s all the same old human social dance, transmogrified to a digital tech, laptop, smart phone reality.

Tremendous black boxes to what future?  

What should we think when we have a box in front of us that has the whole world and all its social and natural history, all music, art, culture, religion, all at our fingertips? There’s no need to go to the library, all the old manual, two-legged interactions are becoming obsolete. Workers are becoming obsolete. It was only a matter of time before human experience itself started to become collapsed into the new tech black box as well.

I see in my feed, either endless anti-Trump posts or other preaching to the choir Left-leaning messages ad infinitum, as if I don’t read the news anyway. I need to be reminded in spades of how fucked up the world is? Yet, on Facebook, no one can take the time to read more than one sentence, so any involved post beyond personal comments, forget it. Facebook ends up being short attention span clickbait for outraged activists and for gossipy, personal stuff. Content with any depth that requires thought and interaction is verboten, there are very few “likes” in there for depth. The trend for digital social media is more quantity, less quality, as we evolve into some new version of Homo sapiens that leaves past generations in the dust.

There are tons of posts on serious things, but no interest in actually engaging in anything serious in the forum. The act of posting substitutes for action. Tons of interest in things not serious.

There you have it. Are we the victims or the crime?  Facebook is a disembodied realm of endless interplay between our interests and a tech platform that harnesses the whole vast power of the internet. Facebook is a powerful forum to air opinions. The opinions however, are meted out as short soundbites. To what end? I’m going to be doing the things I do anyway. Others will do the same. In some ways it is just a big distraction to nowhere, one that gives us a magical view into carefully crafted versions of other people’s lives. It’s tech social media make up; the real human face lies hidden underneath.

Algorithm manipulation

For the newsfeed, there’s no way to really control it. I can’t get back to where I was, there is no solid point, no “internet history”, no record to hit the back button to. We are being manipulated and force-fed the newsfeed sequence by an algorithm that is bizarre and not open to any substantial preferences settings. Why aren’t the preferences more transparent and under my control?  Well, that’s part of the game, and then Mark Zuckerburg wouldn’t be a billionaire.

This algorithm stuff is another first step into a Terminator, Mad Max, Dune, or Planet of the Apes-type future, with robots controlling us. It happened a little at a time, Windows NT, Windows, laptops, cell phones, smart phones, surveillance, and we went to it like lambs to the slaughter. Is this real, an algorithm says what I get to see? Only if I consent, which I have just done after years of being perfectly happy with no Facebook. I could easily ditch the whole thing, I’m not fully addicted yet.

Conclusion

Facebook tastes sweet but there is no real sugar high.

There are some good features on Facebook, but en route to enjoying them is a house of mirrors of clickbait, clickbait that is at once fun, real and satisfying, but also a reflection of ourselves as we surrender our volition like lambs to the slaughter to forces we allow to manipulate us.

At the end of the day, people are motivated by simple forces. Facebook takes these forces and makes things too easy. We are allowing ourselves to be seduced by sugary social media clickbait, without examining the corollary more sinister end results.