Ahh yes, Facebook.
I have been on Facebook for the past 12 years or so. 2005? 2006? Yeah, I remember Facebook’s humble roots. I remember Facebook when it was TWITTER! You had to have a college email address to sign up, and the only thing you could do was post “status updates” which completed the phrase “Meghan is…” Updates would post in chronological order and oh yeah, it was BORING. You’d keep Facebook open in one tab while using AIM primarily and downloading Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind” on KazaA, hitting “refresh” to find out that the girl from your lit class is studying for a chem exam. WOW. Scintillating.
Of course, gradually, Facebook evolved. We could upload PICTURES! Grainy, underdeveloped, early-era digital photos with the time stamp in the corner where everybody hunches awkwardly together with their red Solo cups (it’s GINGER ALE, Mom! I’m the DESIGNATED DRIVER!) to match their red eyes, because #NoFilters, this is the Naughty Oughties, a time of ill-advised low-rise jeans. May this era burn in hell.
In my opinion, Facebook peaked with Farmville.
Oh damn, did I fucking LOVE Farmville.
Now, you’ll remember, it’s at this point that Facebook is STILL serving us chronological updates, we’re STILL poking each other in earnest (for some reason? ok) and it’s STILL primarily a glorified Twitter. However, I look fondly on Farmville because it allowed me escapism from the shitty, soul-sucking job I was working at the time. Also, I was smoking a lot of pot (Naughty Pot-y Aughties!) and I like, REALLY cared about my strawberry crop.
It is my absolute belief that Facebook quickly started fucking itself after it released Farmville. Shit got monetized. All the ads! All the brands! All the memes! It stopped being a way to loosely keep tabs on the 500-or-so people you went to high school/college with and started to become the favorite rant-outlet of your racist aunt who looooves Minions for some reason?
Now, we all hate Facebook.
Let’s get one thing straight: it’s always been “trendy” to “hate on Facebook.” Guaranteed, even in the early heyday of Facebook, when it was used to stay in contact with your fellow group members working on a class project together (ugh, fuck group projects), there would always be that too-cool-customer who would casually drop “Oh, I don’t have a Facebook.” Wow, S. E. Hinton, you’re such an OUTSIDER. Congrats on marching to the beat of your own drum! I hope these people NEVER gave in to peer pressure and convenience and never, ever signed up for Facebook. But then, I really wouldn’t know, because if you don’t have a Facebook for me to find out, you’ve probably died. And that’s just a fact. And I’m sorry.
Of course we hate Facebook because of the fake news blah blah stealing our data blah blah whatever whatever whatever. Everybody knows that, and we all hate Mark Zuckerberg’s smug fucking face for it. But is that enough to motivate us to jump through the apparent necessary hoops to delete our accounts??? Considering the laziness of Millennials These Days™, anything that takes THAT much effort (and yah, it’s a lot of effort, actually, if you look into it). So what is there for us to do?
Solution: Newsletters.
Facebook, you’re tl;dr. I don’t have time to scroll through you. Just give me what I need to know, and let me get back to my life. Please only send me newsletters to let me know which of the people I went to high school with are:
- engaged
- pregnant
- racist
That’s all I ever need to know from Facebook, and that’s all people ever use Facebook to announce. “I’m getting married!” “I’m welcoming a new little one into the family!” “I voted for Trump!” and that’s it. That’s all I need to know. That’s all I want to know. And I leave you with one final FB profile picture of mine:
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