My Departure From Facebook
“Speaking through social media isn’t really speaking at all. Context is applied to what you say after you say it, for someone else’s purposes and profit.”
Firstly, stop attempting to change the way I think! Secondly, no! I don’t want to boost my post. This is a defining statement as I would say the second part of this was one of the strongest points of frustration for me when it came to being on Facebook, the first part, well we will get onto that later.
Being a business owner and an Artist, I had multiple pages live on Facebook and on a daily basis, Facebook hounds us with the whole “boost this post to reach this audience” on each page, daily! To the point where it frankly feels like harassment. Not to mention these notifications would pop up on my phone in the Pages and Facebook Apps as well as via a browser, so they duplicate over different platforms, I saw those notifications a lot! We do have to wonder why they are so pushy to get everyone to monetise their message and push it towards a targeted demographic. Being someone who likes the idea of connecting with like-minded people, I would enjoy seeing a notification as I would be intrigued to see what chat I would get into, but seeing these relentlessly crop up among the genuine chatter, it was an issue for me. Especially when I knew I could be having the same chats over email, face to face or during a Youtube stream but that, of course, is not all…
Privacy. The task of splitting business and personal was a problem; I went to some lengths to separate my profiles. In 2019 when I still had Facebook, I actually had 2 accounts, one for business and one for personal, these profiles were even tied to two separate devices as I have a phone for work and a phone for personal. The business account had close to 4000 connections; while my personal account comprised only of people I actually knew and had established a genuine connection with, that had around 90 connections on it. The thing that got me, was despite making it plainly obvious that one profile was for business and acquaintances and one was for private, it seemed to make no different what-so-ever. Random people still wanted access to these accounts. It’s like people want access to your private details constantly and more than that, they feel entitled to it. I get it, I mean I used to feel the same way I guess until I woke up.
To expand, my original profile (the one that later because my business account) grew hugely during my travels to Los Angeles in 2015. I had the belief that I had to connect with as many people as possible and that it was vital to my creative endeavours and my business. As such, I added and accepted anyone who was in any way connected to music, especially film music; an area of the industry I am clearly interested in. Even if I had never spoken to that said person or indeed listened to their music, I would accept the request or hit the add button blindly. I had bought into my very argument above as a youngster on the road. While this made way for observing some interesting posts, seeing people at work and opened the door for some brief interactions, it was difficult to fire up any real sense of conversation, I mean, after all, we essentially didn’t know each other at all. Facebook on my business account ultimately became a source of depression for me. A “Feedback Loop From Hell” as Mark Manson would describe in his book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck”. When work was dry, it was even more apparent that you were not employed when you saw the endless stream of updates from people you didn’t even know, yet seemingly were working and doing well…When you were unsure of a track, there were endless streams of content to make a comparison against. Of course on the flip side, when things were a little up for you, the posts would fly up from your end too, essentially showing off I guess… I mean everyone else was doing it so I sure as hell was going to as well… Then there was a couple of sobering moments.
What hit me the most, was when I met up with a colleague I did actually know for a few beers in London. The conversation quickly turned glum as we both sat there at that time complaining of not hearing back on pitches, commenting on the 30 cues we sent to this or that publisher without a sausage back and of course the ever long story of endless computer issues we had both been experiencing hindering our workflow.. Then it hit me, I was astounded and asked, “hang about, what about your post on this? What about your post on that?”… My friend then proceeded to explain that those posts were not quite true… They were not exactly lies, but some things had been let’s just say, exaggerated in such a way that would show the ultimate positivity with a glimpse of any sign of negativity or struggle… My friend shrugged and said, “You know how it is mate, you have to keep up appearances I guess”… He went off to the bar and I sat there for a time; I recalled situations I had sat at home with the cursor flashing on that “What’s on your mind” screen after a rough day and realised that I had indeed done this myself at times… The number of positive posts we put up when actually, we feel the polar opposite, we feel it would be “bad for business” or even "bad for character" if we commented otherwise, I’m not surprised people are anxious and downright depressed in or times. But if we observe this, we need to ask the question... Why do we do this? We seem to think that we need Facebook and social media in general, it has been presented, sold and integrated into our lives in such as way and they really have excelled exponentially in making us think it’s relevant and important. Like a “true” reflection of the world we live in, but it simply is not.
A similar thing happened on a personal level, meeting up with a really old and close friend… We got the food order in, opened the wine and laughed, joked and recalled old times… I then started congratulating him on his recent marriage and apologised that I didn’t make the wedding (he got married abroad), but the photos looked great etc… He then went quiet and proceeded to tell me that actually, things had not worked out and he was currently separated… My jaw hit the deck! I never would have thought that to be the case. Again, his social media and that of his then-wife too simply didn’t reflect the truth at all. I rest my case professionally and personally.
Now let’s talk about the first part to my opening statement, the whole “changing the way I think” part… If they don’t piss you off enough by asking you to monetise your pages all the time, they also allow political parties, celebrities, businesses and those with political messages and views which don’t resonate with you to target adverts, news stories and carefully written propaganda your way. While us users might just scroll past these posts, we essentially soak up the information in our subconscious. Have you ever wondered how you seem to know so much about a specific celebrity, a political party, a news story, an artist, new food or drink trend or a company without seemingly dedicating any time to reading into it yourself at all? How do you know about it? Have a think about that for a minute…
Facebook is supposed to be a place for us to network, a place where our words mean something, where we keep in touch with people we care about and an experience we share and enjoy within our own communities, but that is not how they are making their money, and what makes them money is essentially what they will prioritise. The site may operate under this guise, but this is what Jaron Lavier is referring to in the opening quote of this post and it makes absolute perfect sense to me! Did you put a post up about loving Netflix and hating Amazon Prime? Great, that’s another bit of information to the algorithm to exploit. Did you vote Republican and dismiss a Democratic policy and comment on it? Another bit of information for the algorithm to exploit… Essentially Facebook actively accepts money from a service, political party, political message or company you both oppose and support, and allow them to target their agenda at you via paid, promoted posts and stories. I will also observe that they have the tendency to prioritise organisations which they themselves wish to spotlight and lobby against voices which go against their establishment.
If you want to communicate in an honest, genuine way, I suggest picking up the phone, writing an email, attending a networking event or just sending your holiday snaps in your own family chat, you will get much better responses from doing so, you will connect more and your feed won't get cluttered with shit in the process.
I guess the big question is, how long will I remain on Instagram and Twitter? Have a great day guys!
-MWB-
