"Call me crazy, but I don’t think the human psyche is meant to contend with everyone else’s exteriors to this degree, especially not from the privacy of our own messy interiors." - This, right here.
I contemplate quitting this or that often, and most people who are on social do the same. It's become a sort of necessary evil, especially for people who work in marketing and adjacent fields.
I'll share a story that feels relevant to your thoughts here.
When we moved to Colorado a few years ago, I joined a couple of local Facebook groups to try and get the lay of the land, learn about good places to eat, local politics, contractor recommendations, etc. Not a bad use for Facebook, on its surface. Over time, I noticed that the people inhabiting these groups were aggressively negative in attitude and libertarian in values (which is not a compliment). I started thinking that these shitty attitudes were held by most people around me, and it colored my view of my adopted home state.
Three years later, and we moved back to Illinois. Having quit Facebook in 2020, I recently went back solely to monitor a couple of local groups for activism reasons. Guess who hangs out in those groups? Those same libertarian types with their same gripes and same disdain for any forms of social good at any level. As their shittiness started getting inside my head, I remembered my Colorado experience and realized that I do not and did not often encounter people who act like this in meatspace. But that personality tends to park itself in certain local groups and pee in the pools there.
I think people exercise more restraint about being shitty face-to-face. I know 2016 and COVID has changed that significantly, but I still believe this holds true.
Once I realized it was messing with my head again, I logged out of Facebook.
Like you, I don't think all technology is evil and we met on Twitter, so net positive, right? But I think so many of us are grappling with ideas of how much is too much, what are the best use cases for these networks, what are our friends who shitcanned it all experiencing--a friend is experiencing so much creative vibrancy since quitting all social, for example.
I was also a part of a FB group to get the lay of the land and saw more racism than I thought existed in said land (and I’m a sociologist so that says a lot). Then I started to feel like you, this is just a loud minority and it’s warping my view of most people. But then I saw a post by my son’s kinder teacher that was on some colorblind bullshit (which is “polite” racism) and I thought well, it may be a minority, but it’s a minority I probably should still be aware of since I may have to interact, in a meaningful way, with some of these people.
I emailed his teacher about her post online and what it meant for me to see that as a parent of a black boy in her class, and then I never saw her post again. But was that better? Now I knew what I was dealing with but other parents wouldn’t. Le sigh.
Tiffany, I think with kids in school, FB becomes a sort of necessary evil. Kids who go away to a four-year college even have to use it, as many activities and clubs are organized using FB groups. I'm in a small enough community and my kids are out of school that I don't feel like being on there is a net positive because it does mess w/my head so much.
FWIW, I'm glad you reached out to your son's teacher; perhaps it gave her something to think about.
Sheldrick is THE BEST. We went to see friends in Cairo back in 2009 and took a 24 hr detour to Nairobi to visit my adopted baby elephant. Totally worth it.
"Call me crazy, but I don’t think the human psyche is meant to contend with everyone else’s exteriors to this degree, especially not from the privacy of our own messy interiors." - This, right here.
I contemplate quitting this or that often, and most people who are on social do the same. It's become a sort of necessary evil, especially for people who work in marketing and adjacent fields.
I'll share a story that feels relevant to your thoughts here.
When we moved to Colorado a few years ago, I joined a couple of local Facebook groups to try and get the lay of the land, learn about good places to eat, local politics, contractor recommendations, etc. Not a bad use for Facebook, on its surface. Over time, I noticed that the people inhabiting these groups were aggressively negative in attitude and libertarian in values (which is not a compliment). I started thinking that these shitty attitudes were held by most people around me, and it colored my view of my adopted home state.
Three years later, and we moved back to Illinois. Having quit Facebook in 2020, I recently went back solely to monitor a couple of local groups for activism reasons. Guess who hangs out in those groups? Those same libertarian types with their same gripes and same disdain for any forms of social good at any level. As their shittiness started getting inside my head, I remembered my Colorado experience and realized that I do not and did not often encounter people who act like this in meatspace. But that personality tends to park itself in certain local groups and pee in the pools there.
I think people exercise more restraint about being shitty face-to-face. I know 2016 and COVID has changed that significantly, but I still believe this holds true.
Once I realized it was messing with my head again, I logged out of Facebook.
Like you, I don't think all technology is evil and we met on Twitter, so net positive, right? But I think so many of us are grappling with ideas of how much is too much, what are the best use cases for these networks, what are our friends who shitcanned it all experiencing--a friend is experiencing so much creative vibrancy since quitting all social, for example.
I was also a part of a FB group to get the lay of the land and saw more racism than I thought existed in said land (and I’m a sociologist so that says a lot). Then I started to feel like you, this is just a loud minority and it’s warping my view of most people. But then I saw a post by my son’s kinder teacher that was on some colorblind bullshit (which is “polite” racism) and I thought well, it may be a minority, but it’s a minority I probably should still be aware of since I may have to interact, in a meaningful way, with some of these people.
I emailed his teacher about her post online and what it meant for me to see that as a parent of a black boy in her class, and then I never saw her post again. But was that better? Now I knew what I was dealing with but other parents wouldn’t. Le sigh.
Tiffany, I think with kids in school, FB becomes a sort of necessary evil. Kids who go away to a four-year college even have to use it, as many activities and clubs are organized using FB groups. I'm in a small enough community and my kids are out of school that I don't feel like being on there is a net positive because it does mess w/my head so much.
FWIW, I'm glad you reached out to your son's teacher; perhaps it gave her something to think about.
Sheldrick is THE BEST. We went to see friends in Cairo back in 2009 and took a 24 hr detour to Nairobi to visit my adopted baby elephant. Totally worth it.