Taming Facebook

It might seem premature to be using “mid-life crisis” in talking about something  that’s been around for less than two decades, but it’s still a long time for a company like Facebook. For some of us, Facebook is almost a utility now. For others, it’s an obsession, and for still others, a soapbox. For the individual user, like me for instance, it likely has been each of those things at different times.


The news is telling us that Facebook is looking down the barrel of a $5 billion federal fine for failing to take steps to protect users’  privacy. Negotiations are underway about this, and one of the remedies is the appointment of a committee -- yes, of actual humans – to oversee Facebook’s privacy policies.


Meanwhile, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about transforming the whole user experience to stress communication with friends and family and de-emphasize the use of FB for exhibitionism, interference by foreign adversaries, and hate speech. It’s kind of a shame that people can’t play nicely in the sandbox, and now the sand itself has to be changed.


Many have decided that it’s not a nice place to play at all anymore and have pulled the plug, at least for personal use, notably the millennial congresswoman we call AOC, who termed social media a public health risk. I tried to give FB up for Lent, with what I and my friends will agree were decidedly mixed results. I did manage to use it less, and yes, I did get more things done in what’s generally known as real life.


But if we use Facebook, is not that still part of our real life? We have constantly heard the social scientists talking about work-life balance, as if what we do for a living (if it needs to be for a living) is not part of life, that life is only what we do in our free time. We can even revisit the expression “free time.”


The useful part of that work-life phrase, though, is balance. It’s possible to exercise some control short of disconnection. I saw an article online today about spring cleaning strategies for our social media experience. The writer borrowed from neatness guru Marie Kondo, whose mantra is, if it gives you joy, keep it, and if it’s no longer useful, thank it for its service and kiss it goodbye (almost literally).


So while Facebook may be cleaning up its act, perhaps we can do something similar. If you are one of those who can unplug entirely, congratulations may be in order. But for those of us who don’t or can’t, we can at least face up to the part that social media use plays in our lives and work on putting it in its place. I believe that by now, we have to accept that it has one.

Take My Data...Please

The outrage over Facebook supplying personal user data to Cambridge Analytica, when you put it all into perspective, is about nothing that new. Facebook is a media company dedicated to delivering eyeballs to other entities that seek to persuade us to buy something or believe something.

Broadcast media have long targeted demographics. When I worked in radio programmers at my station went after the cherished 25-54-year-old demo, the group said to have the biggest buying power. TV and radio stations pursued ratings to show advertisers they could deliver those eyeballs or eardrums. Advertisers use greed, fear, and of course, sex, to convert users into buyers. For years,  the target – the demo – has been the broad side of a barn. The only thing different is the accuracy of the targeting, thanks to the information at hand. As for the barn, well, the privacy horse left it long ago.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is not opposed to regulation, but the issue is the kind of regulation. Keeping our personal information away from advertisers or political entities is a non-starter, though, as it’s the basic media business model. Facebook doesn’t charge us as individuals for using its service. That said, these social media platforms should be required to educate users about what’s happening with their data – and that means going way beyond a fine-print user agreement that nobody reads. And Facebook does have to keep track of who gets this data and how it is used, what apps are doing with it…and by the way, keep those clients out of our Friends lists. Just as an aside: if we want our data kept from prying eyes, would we be willing to pay for belonging to Facebook?

It may be in fashion now to hate Facebook, but most of us like keeping up with friends and family, and social media have allowed us to reconnect with people long since forgotten. I work from home and have no co-workers, so Facebook allows me to maintain ties with former colleagues. True, these contacts are no substitute for actual human interaction, but I still think they’re better than nothing. At its best, Facebook offers a reminder in our low points in life that whatever the situation, we are not alone.

We users are not victims, unless we allow ourselves to be.  If we want privacy, we have control of the switch or the plug and can always turn it off or pull it out. But if we do want to use these media, we have choices, and it’s our responsibility to choose those that best serve and inform us, and for which we are willing to sacrifice some level of privacy.  We can also teach our kids how to make the best choices, and impress upon them that in the end, we are our own editors, in control of our eyeballs, eardrums…and brains.

Facebook Apps I Think We Need

On the way down to the Ferrari showroom, I sez to myself, “Self, get ready for Easy Street! You’ll make a fortune designing Facebook apps – ones that are really necessary, to block certain things at those times that we’re just tired of seeing them. I even have names for the apps:

QuizBlock: Haven’t we all had enough of these blessed quizzes? I don’t care what kind of Downton Abbey character or Renaissance figure you “got,” what your governing emotion is, what breed of dog you’d like to be, or where you’re supposed to live that you don’t. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s you taking the quiz.

ListBlock: 10 Characteristics of a Good Boss; 10 Decisions You Should Have Made 10 Years Ago, But Didn’t; Five Most Common Deathbed Regrets, do I need to go on here?

FoodBlock: Why is it that I’m never hungry when you post what you ate at the fancy restaurant in your city that I’ll never get to?

NewsoftheWeirdBlock: I get it! The world is full of not-very-smart criminals, or people who insist on nakedness or sex in inappropriate places.

A few others, included in the deluxe software package: CatBlock, DogBlock, ToddlerBlock, and, of course, FlowerBlock.

But here’s one everybody needs: BS-Block, to shield you from pithy, quasi-spiritual philosophical sayings, usually posted in the morning, with calligraphic fonts, sometimes over puffy clouds, or flowers (but FlowerBlock may handle those).

But hey, never say never! I’d have to put a toggle button in most of these apps, because moods change, and like me, you might find yourself not only wanting to see these things occasionally, but becoming an “offender” yourself in one or more of the categories shown. (Guilty as charged!)

I wonder if they’ll let me have the Ferrari on a really long-term installment plan?

Anniversary Waltz

B’day greetings to Facebook, 10 years old today. And no, I don’t want to give it a gift, but it does have a place in my life.

I was first invited to FB by a former colleague who accidentally hit the button to invite all her contacts. In those days, I was worried about the now-quaint concept called privacy, so I didn’t bite. Then I was invited by a former boss, who probably hit the same button. Curiously, to this day, he almost never posts anything, while I, always needing to perform, am whaling away at it.

Addicted? Not quite yet, but a “user” nonetheless. Working alone from home now, I realize how great it was to have actual co-workers, even though I didn’t always like the job. FB allows me to keep in touch with former colleagues. Since most of them are about half my age, they keep me in touch with the world. The real world? That’s another discussion.

There are people in my life whom I never thought would still be in it – and maybe a couple who don’t belong in it – because of this invention, created so that male college students could evaluate females. I could look down my nose at that, but if I were that age and a college student in 2004, I’m sure I would have been a major player.

Now I’m at a certain age where I seem to keep reminding myself that Facebook is an artificial tether. There are those whose lives I wouldn’t be participating in – even those on other continents – were it not for FB. But hang on a minute. Didn’t people of a certain age say that at the arrival of the telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, or Skype -- how all these would alter human interaction forever?

They were right! None of these is a substitute for flesh-and-blood contact. But the healthy among us (not necessarily including me) have managed to make room for these devices in our lives, putting them where they belong.

My dear FB friends, some of you are boring (not many). But some of you are enlightening, some are entertaining, some pierce my soul, and most of you do all these things at one time or another. I just hope I’m holding up my end of the bargain.

Facebook and the Demise of Goodbye

A former colleague and good friend announced plans a few months ago to sell her local home and move to another state in a completely different part of the country. She has many good friends in my area, and amid all the preparations associated with getting the house ready for sale and making moving arrangements, she had to squeeze in time to say goodbye in person to her friends individually, as she had decided not to have a final gathering. 

My turn came, and we had dinner and said our goodbyes. I was fully aware that I would likely never see this individual again in my lifetime. My friend’s new city is not an obvious “bucket-list” place. My wife and I would probably not pick it out for a vacation, and neither of us have any family in that area or any business reason to go there. And as we talk about lifetime, while I have a ways go yet, in the great scheme of things, there’s not all that much of that left.

The modern difference in all this, however, is that my former colleague and I are Facebook friends. I was reluctant to join FB a few years ago, but she was one of the first to welcome me to it when I did. Being part of a younger generation and being who she is, she “shares” (there’s another word whose future I’m worried about) almost everything, and as she writes beautifully and her posts are almost always interesting, she has a large following.

In the old days, when you said goodbye in person in the circumstances described here, that might be it, unless you wanted to rack up phone bills or exchange letters (remember those?). There was goodbye, because there would be physical distance, so it really meant something.

In my friend’s case, she would not be leaving for about a month after our dinner, but she continued to post on FB, and I continued to follow. As there’s a drama king in me, I was moved to say goodbye on FB several more times; I’m a movie buff, and the best ones always seem to have logical endings. Anyway, she finally launched her cross-country road trip to get to her new home, FB posting, of course, all the way, and I and her large group of friends were able to “follow” her. It felt almost like she hadn’t left at all.

As in real (as opposed to virtual) life, there are all kinds of relationships possible on Facebook, and you can control their intensity, both on “input” and “output.” You obviously can control what you write and who sees it, as can your friends. You can “hide” the posts of the most annoying people from your input stream (“news feed”), and there’s even the nuclear option: you can “unfriend” someone.  

But “goodbye,” as some of us used to know it, can just about disappear from your life, if you choose, in our new ultra-connected world -- as perhaps time and distance already have.

In Defense of Narcissism

I heard a rather remarkable interview today on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Host Terry Gross talked to comedian Tig Notaro, whom most of us never heard of until she took the stage for her show and announced, “Good evening, hello. I have cancer! How are you?” She had just been diagnosed with cancer in both breasts, and earlier that day had decided to dump her previous plan for the evening’s show and work it around her illness.

She told Gross that she hesitated before making this decision, on the grounds that she didn’t want to offend those in her audience who might have cancer themselves or be experiencing it in their families. But finally, she concluded it was her show, and her story. So well did she do, in fact, that a much better-known comedian, Louis C.K., who was there that night, deemed it one of the greatest performances he had ever seen, and posted a recording of it to a million-plus followers. Notaro, BTW, is now doing fine medically, but only after a double mastectomy.

A Facebook friend of mine, who is about to have her first baby, started a blog about it. She, too, had hesitated on the grounds that someone else had told her it was narcissistic to write about herself this way – but she happens to be a great writer, and I’m happy she moved forward with her plan. I have other social media friends who write about themselves constantly, leaving almost nothing out, even crossing the dreaded TMI line once in a while.

Coming from a different generation – as many as two ahead of some of these folks -- I was raised differently, plus I have struggled to learn to shut up. There are personal things now that I could never discuss with anyone, much less post about them. If I ever should contract a terminal illness, I plan to tell as few people as possible, only because when you’re in that way and everyone else finds out, you have the additional task of making all of them feel better as well as yourself. Hopefully that’s a bridge I’ll never have to cross.

Nevertheless, I am very grateful for narcissists, if by that we mean people who talk or write about themselves all the time. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and as human beings, whether we like it or not, we depend on narcissists to tell us how we “work.” From narcissists, we learn we’re not alone. If we’re going through something, chances are there’s a narcissist somewhere among us who has been there and done that and expressed themselves on the subject. We may not work it out the same way, but it does give us hope, and often puts a few signs on the trail for others making the journey.

Of course, it’s a question of style. Tig Notaro shared her story as a comedian. Many do it with poetry or song. But I have always deeply admired those who have thought carefully enough about their own experience to clearly articulate exactly what’s going on with them. So please, narcissists, keep it up – you have fans out there, whether they’re willing to admit it or not.

And if you’re really a narcissist, as Carly Simon might say, you probably think this post is about you – and you might be right.

Friends, Followers and Figures

After running out of useful ways of spending time one day this week, I happened to open my Facebook Timeline and noticed that the number of Friends had dropped by one.

I still have a little self-respect, so I’m not going to tell you how many FB friends I have, other than it’s a lot more than Twitter followers (still have found relatively little use for that). In any case, though there’s no good reason for it, I’m consumed with curiosity as to why the number of Friends went down.

There are a few possibilities. It could be some kind of Facebook glitch, though that is, of course, highly unlikely. Or, it may be that somebody pulled the plug on Facebook, especially if they live in a dicey foreign country. But it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that someone pulled the plug on ME – I’ve been “unfriended.”

So now, questions arise: Was it something I said? Did I zig politically when I should have zagged, or pan the wrong movie, or hit the “Like” button for some tragic story? Was it my spelling or English usage? Did someone take me literally when I was trying to be cleverly sarcastic?

I may, of course, be able to figure out the answer if I determine who left, but the plug-puller doesn’t have to disclose that. I don’t have a lot of FB friends – I don’t collect them – but there are enough so that it would be a fairly difficult task to go through and dope out who was there once, and isn’t now.

But I have to draw the line somewhere. There are enough figures to keep track of in life – cholesterol count, blood pressure, BMI, fat percentage in meat – and even my age. And that’s a number that’s going up soon – meaning I should be a little more careful about what I spend an ever-diminishing amount of time worrying about.

Nice Problem to Have

OK, let’s get this out of the way first: I’m envious of all those new Facebook zillionaires half my age. What are they going to do with all their money?

First, I hope they spend it! The economy has been in the toilet in large part because money hasn’t been circulating. If the Facebookers, as an example, insist on building ugly monster homes, at least there will be lots of tradespeople with new gigs.

The first folks to cash in will be financial advisers, who will be swarming over the new wealthy like ants. If you’re young, and all of a sudden you have money, you probably don’t know what to do with it, so it doesn’t hurt to listen to someone who knows more than you.

I’ve never quite had the experience, so am not one to talk, but handling wealth wisely involves time, effort and imagination. I’m reminded of the elementary school teacher who told her students that, for one class, they each had $5 million, and their assignment was to write down 10 things they’d spend it on, not including real estate. The kids, of course, took the whole class period to make their lists, and most didn’t come close to disposing of all the money. Adults might have a little easier time with this game, but it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.

The good news is, that people who literally have more money than they know what to do with often have little choice left but to invest it in ways that do good for others, whether funding a company that creates jobs or setting up a charitable foundation. It’s almost imperative that they “send it out” in some form.

I’ve never fully understood gold as an investment. Gold is the investment of fear. It’s a gilded mattress. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t do anything or really make anything much. Real wealth comes from ideas – the idea behind Facebook, or the ideas behind Apple’s products. Apple stock has multiplied much faster than gold did, even at the height of the recession.

China has made lots of money putting together products that people want – but many of the ideas for those products have come from the United States. As long as we keep coming up with ideas, we can dig ourselves out of our current financial hole.

But I digress. I’m still envious of those Facebookers. Looks like I’m going to have to postpone my visit to the Porsche dealership – I think it’s going to be a little crowded this week.

Facebook: The Place and the Time

Well, here we go. One writer has likened Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in their relative impact on society. Before St. Mark (I thought we already had one of those) is assumed into heaven, it’s useful to think about where ideas come from, their often humble beginnings, and the people who take them to great heights.

Thanks to history, we all know that the greatest inventions are really discoveries – and a discovery isn’t something created by the discoverer – it’s there all the time, waiting to be found. Sometimes, discoveries languish because the discoverers don’t understand the significance of what they’ve found. Columbus may have “discovered” America, except he thought it was India (which is why we call them the West “Indies”). And those called the Indians simply called it home.

Discovery can also come by accident. The medical literature is filled with such stories. Penicillin, one of the most hallowed antibiotics of the 20th century, was a suspicious mold found growing on one of Dr. Alexander Fleming’s Petri dishes. Had the good doctor been less than curious, we would never have known about it – and it took him 20 years to see it developed into a useful medication.

My favorite invention, radio, may have been discovered by Marconi, but he considered it primarily as a means of communication with ships at sea. He saw no entertainment value in it – those ideas would come from David Sarnoff and his successors, who would make much more money than Marconi.

Let’s remember what Facebook was originally. You saw the movie. It was used to rate the attractiveness of women in college dormitories. Facebook, of course, wasn’t even the first social network. It’s all about what you do with the ball after you pick it up. Zuckerberg learned quickly how to run with it, focusing on essentials to bring Facebook to where it is today. And yes, he should get credit for that. Certainly, he’ll be counting it on Friday.

Often, the way for the “next big thing” is paved by others. Many had tried flying; the Wright Brothers got the plane off the ground. Part of it is learning from others’ mistakes (or your own), part is persistence, and part is luck. Or, if you prefer, it’s simple evolution – it’s just time for it to happen.

I’m jealous, of course, of all those at Facebook headquarters who will become instant zillionaires this week when the company goes public. The challenge for them is not letting it go completely to their heads. They’re simply the poster children for being in the right place at the right time.

About Face

I changed my mind, bit the bullet and joined Facebook.

Concerns about privacy caused me to hesitate, but as I often tell anyone who will listen, the privacy horse left the barn a long time ago in this country, so why not?

As of this writing I have a dozen Facebook friends, most of whom I used to work with. What amazes me is how much these people have to share. Particularly the women. They all seem to have hundreds of pictures of themselves. Now I’m three times their age in many cases, and I have a only a third as many photos. And no small number of those are from film, so I’d have to convert them into jpgs for posting. That’s a lot of work. If I wanted to make Facebook a full-time job, I’m sure it would be easy. I think it must be a consuming occupation with some of these folks. And I see how this amoebic acquisition of friendships can become addicting.

But here’s my problem. My life just isn’t all that interesting, and I have no way of holding up my end in the sharing department. I was a journalist for a long time, and spent most of it concerned with what was happening to others, not to me. In this profession, we’re often so involved with others’ lives that we sometimes substitute that for living our own. But maybe that says more about me than about the profession.

I do hope my newfound friends forgives my lack of production. There will be very little to post on the wall for a while -- just for perspective, I have about enough for a Twitter a month, or a Christmas letter every couple of years. As for Facebook, I enjoy reading about what’s happening to people I know, although I’m still partly at the “What’s the point?” stage of the whole experience. I think there is one, which I expect to fully grasp in time. For now, though, please be patient.

There, now I’ve said it. Your friend, Coughswitch.