It's complicated

My relationship with social media

I deleted 448 Facebook friends last week, and I don’t think a single one of them noticed. At least none of them has messaged me asking why. The last time I trimmed the Facebook fat I got a bunch of messages from people asking for me add them back. Either my social media cache has plummeted, or people aren’t using Facebook as much.

I hope it’s the latter. I want Facebook to go the way of Snapchat (i.e. down a toilet) so that I can get off it, and I’m going to talk about why I want to get off it - and why it’s not that easy - here.

My cousin explained Facebook to me back in December 2006. Her profile picture was of her wearing a bikini. She told me that she had received hateful comments about her figure from strangers. That should have been all the information I needed to steer clear of the thing, really. But I signed up nonetheless.

Facebook was my jam. I loved taking the piss, and soon found a community of likeminded people who also enjoyed taking the piss. I started a series, Douche of the Day, where I’d pick someone who had done or said something dickish and hold forth on them. This was usually a Mubarak. My blog enjoyed some modest success and people found me on Facebook to tell me they had enjoyed something I’d written, and sometimes an online “relationship” grew out of this. That was pretty wowzers.

At the same time as this was happening I was spending a lot of time on Twitter. I used it to get through the interminable boredom of events I covered for work (when I was a journalist not a personal trainer. Love you, clients!). I mostly wrote snarky tweets about people and had unedifying online fights. I put pictures of famous figures I wanted to see ejected from their positions of power as my avatar, and someone named it the Avacarr. The Avacarr curse “worked” on a couple of occasions (some minor politicians) but mostly…it didn’t (Hafez el-Assad and everyone else).

Egyptian Twitter was fun back then. We collectively watched Egypt competing in the African Cup, or a public figure doing something fucking stupid, and there would be hilarious bants. There was a sense of community. I again was able to “talk” to people I’d never otherwise have encountered. People followed me on Twitter. Some followed me because I was at every fucking public gathering that happened in Cairo between 2007 and 2011, and there wasn’t an alternative news source for these happenings. But I suspect many others followed me for the same reasons that some people like to watch traffic fights. I was a car(r) crash, and people love a spectacle. I wrote controversial things and didn’t back down from a confrontation. It was childish. But it’ll always get bums on seats.

Twitter was easy to walk away from. Like every other social media platform it became a dark place during the Egyptian revolution, but its anonymity made it particularly nasty. I hightailed it out of there but still have an account which I use to follow fitness and physio people. Much better. I occasionally come across people pompously opining on topics and shrivel with embarrassment on their behalf.

SIDEBAR: I looked up my old blog using the Internet Archive and shrivelled with embarrassment at myself. Yikes. I may write about that traumatising experience (so that I can read it ten years from now and re-shrivel).

People started sounding the warning signal about Facebook and its dodgy privacy and data gathering policies very early. But then the revolution happened, and Facebook (and Twitter) was a useful tool in making that happen. Instructions on where to gather and what to do if you got a teargas facial were put online. These were ordinary people without the regimented leadership and cadres of the Muslim Brotherhood. Social media was instrumental in mobilising them. So much so that the government famously turned the Internet off on January 27th almost everywhere in Egypt except for places whose service provider was Noor ADSL (including my house).

I had a massive soft spot for Facebook. I’ve used it to document my existence for almost 20 years. The only other equally comprehensive information source on Sarah Carr is retired librarian, Richard Carr and his collection of a zillion photographs he individually scanned and catalogued. I admin a group that reviews veterinarians in Egypt and which has proved very useful. People post pictures of their rescue animals every Tuesday. Good vibes. I also started a dating group which does very little dating but out of which has emerged a truly wonderful community even if it is a major timesink.

Such is my reputation as an admin that a friend called me the mayor of Facebook.

But as some indefinable moment, Facebook stopped being fun. I found myself mechanically wading through the infinite scroll pool not even seeing the content sloshing before my eyes. I felt compelled to do it because of those dastardly social media engineers and their tricks, and at one point was flitting between Facebook and Twitter endlessly and mindlessly. I would emerge from these trances hours later brain frazzled and disgusted with myself, and usually a little dumber.

So, like I said, I stopped using Twitter. That helped. As did removing Facebook from my phone. Then I installed a Facebook newsfeed blocker on my browser, so now my Facebook infinity scroll is limited to the groups section. Most recently I have removed the Messenger app from my phone (as well as the Reddit, Goodreads, Instagram and Gmail apps). Anything with an infinity scroll function has gone.

For days afterwards I would wake up, reach for my phone, stare at the screen, my thumbs primed and pumped, my mind ready for an injection of mostly absolute shite. There was nothing to scroll. I am much better for this crackdown and I truly feel for anyone who has to have email on their phone. Thoughts and prayers.

I didn’t do this out of a concern for security - or at least that isn’t the main reason. I resent the control social media exerts over our time and attention. I hate the way that nobody is really present with other people anymore if there is a phone in the room. I detest that my fingers still occasionally flitter towards my phone despite the fact that there is nothing on there to receive a bloody notification from other than Whatsapp.

I know I sound like an unbearable old fart but I’ve had it. I’ve had it with looking through my friends list and thinking who the fuck is that? I’ve had it with watching other people’s lives behind a pane of glass like I’m at an aquarium, knowing everything and nothing about them.

Someone described social media connections as “performative friendship”, and I think that sums it up. I have my all but one of my cousins on Facebook and yet if you asked me to give you the names and ages of their children, I couldn’t. My own family!

I still don’t know how, exactly, I’m going to fit Facebook in my life from now onwards. In Egypt it’s pretty essential because so much of daily life relies on knowing someone who knows someone to get anything done. For now I am not going to add anyone I don’t have a connection with somehow in real life unless we have a meaningful relationship online (as much as an online relationship can be meaningful).

BTW the damage that social media is doing goes far beyond social rudeness and you can read about it in Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus.