As I am trying to build myself towards a better place, writing-wise, but I’m also pretty sure it’s an overall mental health push as well to make that even happen, I am looking more and more at social media, in one part, and the internet overall. How does it affect me? Why is it this way? Why have I allowed my experiences to be like they are there.
The great thing about the internet, really, is that like many things, it’s a choice if you use it. But that choice is becoming less of one all the time. I remember at my Big Electronics Retailer job when we stopped having paper applications at all to hand out for people looking to get hired. We forced them to go online to do it. Now, we had computer stations all over the store where someone could do that. But it was a big deal. I lived in a very tech-centric area of Norther California, and my store was literally a five to ten minute drive to the Golden Gate Bridge, right into San Francisco where Big Tech was king (and still is, but it’s pretty much choked the live out of everything else). My store was also right at the entry into some of the poorer urban neighborhoods though, and not all of those young adults just looking to get into the workforce for the first time, and some older adults who were maybe trying to find new jobs after the Tech Bubble burst so recently, had the access to computers at home. Or broadband internet. Or any number of other things.
Sure, we were a tech-oriented store, so maybe the expectation was to possibly weed out some people that weren’t accustomed to using it. But geez, even then I felt like it was somehow being used as an entrance barrier to poorer communities and people of color. Fortunately, we were still lucky enough to have a very diverse employee base at my store, and for most of us that was incredibly important and something we wanted to flourish. But then when my General Manager left, and we got a new one in… He seemed to go in the other direction. I saw some first-hand racism from that guy. And while I felt like I was on his target list to some degree myself, it was nothing in comparison to some of the people I worked with.
I’m a white guy (surprise!) and I had longer hair at the time. It was always clean, sure, but I wore it down most of the time. It got a bit messy. This manager, who was not my favorite person, never said shit to me about it. But to a young black gentleman I worked with who had braids in his hair, and I mean tight, well-maintained, frankly beautifully done braids, the manager told him that he looked unprofessional. The cost and maintenance that went into his hair verses mine was incomparable, and we actually talked about it. I don’t know if he ever did, but I called Human Resources on that manager, for that incident and several others. I know I wasn’t the only one, but I’m happy to say that, even though I left the store before he did, the manager left the company soon after.
Back to the internet.
Facebook isn’t the internet, but for a lot of people it might as well be. I recently ranted here about my issues with the Share button, and I think maybe I could refine some of that. I also mentioned the issue of someone posting some stupid shit about a famous comic creator on Twitter.
Today, an internet friend of mine posted to an article about that Twitter statement, and basically agreed with them. Said they weren’t speaking any lies, as it were. Who wouldn’t trade having Chadwick Boseman being alive and having this other person… not.
Having a random asshole say something like that on the internet is already pretty disgusting to me and makes me question the level of humanity that exists in this world today. Having someone else that I genuinely like, and normally think highly of, echoing that statement. That hurts.
But like I said before, I think the internet, and by that I mostly mean social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, being the snarky, smart-ass, “talk shit to get noticed, any attention is good attention in the end” attitude-having entity that it is, it causes people to just lean into stupid shit.
I’ve done it. I like to think it’s been a long while, but it probably hasn’t. Certainly not long enough. And I can think of things I have said, or thought about saying, and fully intended them to be looked at strictly as jokes. Me having no real intent behind them. Certainly not me wanting to hurt anyone. But callousness isn’t comedy (unless you’re Anthony Jesselneck, and I’m sorry, but that guy is hilarious!). Cruelty even less so.
Being funny though, and getting attention, is hard. Being someone that wants to be seen on the internet I have to assume is way, way harder. There are people that do it with genuine talent. There are people who do it by copying others they’ve seen. There are also people who do it by being the loudest asshole around. If you’re pissing people off, congratulations! You’re winning!
It’s an odd scoreboard that. And, for me, I don’t know what that winning actually equates to.
So I recently had it out with someone that has been a family friend of mine for forty years or so. We were kids together. His adoptive mother was best friends with my grandmother. We were neighbors. We hung out a lot as kids. Less so as we got older. I guess when I got on Facebook, some of his family was already friends with my family, and we added each other.
Politically, we are now polar opposites. And for a while, I thought that would be okay.
But over time, I saw that he was in the same position that I experience a lot from others on his side of the political line. And I’m going to be totally honest here… The people on my side do it too, I’m sure of it. I just am not the target of it, so I haven’t experienced it. I’m not saying a side is better, or a side is worse, although I obviously align more with mine than the other (which goes back to me talking about letting too many people into your circle).
What I saw though was that it wasn’t enough for disagreements. It wasn’t enough to say, “That’s not how I see it,” or even, “That’s not how it is.”
It was insults. It was lies. It was sending me instant messages (which is why I don’t have an instant messenger app on my phone), trying to show me articles from dubious sites and propaganda that fit his world view and opposed mine, and be like, “See? You see this? Argue with this! Argue with me! Validate me with your discourse!”
And I didn’t. I wouldn’t. It wasn’t worth my time or effort. But he would show up on my wall and try to start arguments, and I’d tease him, sometimes reprimand him. But then he’d get into it with my friends. My real friends. The people who have been there for me the last twenty years or more. And that would put me at a more defensive level, and then a more aggressive level. But I still maintained that he was just being an asshole, but we had history, and shared family, so I couldn’t just let that go.
It was pretty selfish. Of me. I should’ve seen it sooner. That I didn’t I completely know is a personal failing of mine. It’s part of what I’m trying to work on.
This past week, again, a former family friend who I found on Facebook, but also is on the other side of the political thinkspeak from me, she and someone who is an old work friend had an exchange on one of my posts. And I let it ride at first because, in the first bits, it wasn’t out of line. But then the old friend went to “Stop trolling and get a life” to the other person. And I told her, “Hey. Not here. It’s not cool.” She unfriended me later, probably blocked me from what I can tell unless she legitimately close her Facebook account. I’m hoping the former, as someone who has cared about her for a long time, because I don’t want to feel like I in any way chased her off of the platform. I shouldn’t have that kind of power over her or anyone. But I’m seeing a lot of people lately close their accounts, either deactivating to get through these very volatile times, or outright deleting the things entirely because Facebook is part of the fucking problem and shows no real remorse or intention of implementing real change.
I’m considering it too.
But I won’t, simply because for many of the people that I do want to still have in my life, even if only on a website that is more memes than it is human interaction, I can’t walk away from this thing unless they all pick a new place we are comfortable being at instead.
I just don’t know that any new platform is going to be able to do things any differently. If it’s too restrictive, most people won’t go. We like things easy. We like things to feel the same. And if it’s any looser on the rules, it’s already going to be a place I can’t invest in.
So two friends down. I have to see how today’s interaction goes over. I made my piece when I saw the post. I said, “This isn’t really okay with me,” or something to that effect. But I didn’t go beyond that. I’m not gonna curse the guy out or outright “cancel” him. If this becomes the content he wants to post going forward, I’ll quietly take my leave. It’ll suck of course, because I really do like the guy. And I don’t think this post is representative of who he is at all.
But it’s fucking Facebook.
One of the things I’m doing now is giving myself breaks from things that are just not gelling with where my head is at. So I Snooze people a lot. “Don’t see posts from this person for 30 days.” That works. In 30 days time, if they pop back up and I feel like it’s still not a great situation, I can do it again. I also hide as many Meme factory pages as I can. Because I fucking hate that culture. It’s not to say that I’ve never found a meme creative, or funny, or that i haven’t reposted them myself. Of course I have. But the farms are just garbage. They don’t believe in anything, they don’t hold anything of value. They often rip off their “content” from other sites, someone else’s Twitter feed, or reuse the original idea with a blatant paste of barely altered text. It’s bottom-feeding swill most of the time, and that’s the kindest thing I can say about it. So I block it. I have a couple of friend who, that’s all the do is repost memes. And they’re funny, intelligent people with valuable things to say. But it’s how they choose to use their profiles. I can’t tell them not to. But sometimes, I’ll take a break from them. People who just post political stuff right now too. I’ll block the pages and snooze the person. I’m not permanently cutting them out of my life, but I’m giving my consciousness a break.
A few others I’ve done the Unfollow. We’re friends, but 30 days isn’t enough, I know your posts are always going to bug me. Sometimes I have to think, Are We Friends Though? Why is this person taking up space in my brain at all? It depends on the situation, and I’m not someone to just write someone off without a really solid reason.
But I’m learning to be more critical. If not for me, then for the people I care about. Does this person need access to my friends and family through me? Does this person need to believe that their message has support simply because I haven’t publicly ousted them and their opinions from my life completely. People use the word “complicit” a lot these days. Like everything, there are different levels of it. Not everything needs to be or should be weighed the same. But while I wouldn’t point at someone else and tell them they need to be making the hard decisions with the people they’re friends with online, because it’s not my job and it’s not my right… I can and should be doing a better job with and for myself.
I have a YouTube subscription (I was an early adopter to Google Music, which YouTube has royally fucked up, but paying more to move to a different music subscription would suck out loud and then I’d also have to start seeing ads on YouTube proper, so I’m sticking it out). I do like to play music videos and find other things on the site. Lately as I’ve been working from home, I’ve been watching a lot of videos about people who are making webcomics. Tutorials, interviews, just that kind of thing. And then you see the list of videos that YouTube recommends to you and if you have Autoplay on (I normally don’t), it’ll lead you down it’s algorithmic pathway to some stupid and dark shit if you let it.
A lot of recommendations I see are the “Top Five” lists. E! Channel-lite garbage. But then it’s a bunch of videos that are the next level. “Everything Wrong With This Movie In Twenty Minutes Or Less,” or “Why the songs in the Aladdin remake are so terrible!”
I get it. I review horror movies on a podcast. Sometimes it really does come down to us talking about how bad a movie was. I have been looking at myself when it comes to that, and I don’t love it. Because people don’t set out to make shitty films. It’s too much work and too much money and too much on their ability to get their next job to just want to fail. Sometimes bad isn’t bad. Sometimes it’s just missing the mark. Low budget, bad effects, inexperienced actors or directors. And really, if I’m not making stuff and allowing it to be judge by others (which is still my goal), how much can I say?
I do think I’m beyond doing a site that is built around “Here’s where we talk about how bad the new Star Wars sucks” followed by “Here’s where we talk about how the new Marvel film sucks” followed by “Here’s where we talk about how everything DC has done has sucked.” Siskel and Ebert gave plenty of thumbs down, but if it was the only score they ever gave, I don’t think people would’ve felt the need to tune in every week for their next reviews.
So I noticed the three dots by the title of a video that’s on the coming-up list allowed you to choose “Not Interested.” And I finally started using that. It’s hidden, which is annoying. What I used to love about Pandora, the music streaming service, was the simple “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down.” And then the deeper, should you need it, “Never play this artist/band.” It only seemed to work on one channel at a time. I hated that no matter what the original intended music was for a new channel I created, be it Dean Martin or De Bussy, Pandora would inevitably wind up throwing Red Hot Chili Peppers onto it and I’d scream bloody murder and punch in the NEVER-THE-FUCK-AGAIN button as quickly as I could.
(See? I can still talk some shit. Comfortably.)
Facebook and YouTube/Google have what they consider to be some incredible display of A.I. in their mystical “algorithms” that is the basis for their interface redesigns and their ad networks and how they crap all over why you can’t have and shouldn’t even want a chronological timeline for your feeds. I’ve worked endlessly for years to get Google to understand that I don’t want to see stories related to Sports ever, at all, not even a little bit, on my News Feed, but it still somehow assumes that because I’m in proximity of some fucking arena, here’s what happened there last night.
The only reason these algorithms exist, I believe, is so they can say that it’s imperative to their business that no one knows the ingredients in the cheese, as it were. “Don’t look at what we’re doing. It’s private, lock-stock-and-laptop.” But all the really want is to be able to play by their own rules without oversight. Facebook will sell you ads and then tell you if they were successful or not. Not with numbers, just with large invoices. It’s the Emperor’s New SEOs.
That said though, many people just don’t do anything to take control of their feeds and streams. And that’s ideal for these companies. That’s why Likes and Dislikes and Rankings are more and more hidden. Netflix doesn’t care any more if you Thumbs Down their new Adam Sandler movie. Because they have so much other shit on there, you’ll probably never see the stuff you really want, but they stuff they made is front and center so choke on it.
Minor tools have minor power. But we should use the ones that we have. And if we curate and define and tailor our experiences, find-tuning it the best we possibly can, and get rid of the hate mongers and the shit-talkers (except me. I’m your friend) and the crap ads with ad blockers, and realign our feeds into order with Social Fixer…
If we do all that, and then the whole thing still feels like shit any time we log in?
Maybe we’ll figure it all out. And leave.
And, I don’t know, go to MeWe or something.
