Monday, December 12, 2016

Eject Button

I quit Facebook on November 9th.

Maybe "quit" isn't the right word.  I ejected from Facebook.  Quitting sort of implies that I removed something from my life - some outside, unwanted thing like plastic cutlery, or tobacco products, or domestic canned beer.  Like it was an unwanted add-on that could be pulled away from me, the main subject, with just a little effort.   That's not what I did.

On the other hand, ejecting means that rather than removing it from your life, you remove yourself from its life, understanding full well that Facebook is a living, breathing organism unto itself, and it's much, much bigger than any of us, and maybe somehow that skewed proportional relevance has become a part of the problem, whatever the problem actually is.  I never quite figured that part out.

But anyway, just like that, I was out.

As a person that works from home, lives at home, generally stays home most of the time, rides here, eats and drinks here, sleeps here, etc, one interesting aspect of ejecting from Facebook is that I have absolutely no idea what's going on now.   No more Facebook, coupled with a sudden and decisive reduction in the amount of bad news I'm willing to read online, has created an enormous gap between the world and the things happening in it, and me, on a sort of singletrack island here in E-Rallysville.

And I guess that was sort of the point anyway.  Reality vs. Singletrack island.  I'll take Singletrack Island every time, at least until Reality gets its shit together.

Not everyone has that choice, of course.  Plenty of people work in a social-media driven world, or are required to monitor their corporate social media profile, or otherwise don't have the professional ability to just drop back and punt social media on 3rd down before it gets any worse.  I get that.

But you still have the choice, the same choice we all have at the end of the day, every day, when the next thing you do - your own version of reality, not the enormous social one that has been created for you, but your ACTUAL LIFE, reaches a final, rapidly diminishing hour before it's time to pass out:

Ride your bike or surf big blue.
it's enough to drive you crazy
One of these things - only one - will help you, 2 months from now, when the Ghost of Marco Pantani is mocking you as you trudge up Brokenback.

Up to you.

Up, up, up.

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