Facebook Probation

I'm even more fed up with Facebook than I was in my previous blog post. The inevitable friend-of-a-friend troll keeps showing up to ensure that every post degenerates into vitriolic name-calling and arguments of childish logic. Several times within a week, a friend would specifically request that I tune in and give my two cents' worth, but then my hand gets slapped for my trouble. People I've never met misread my simple, innocuous statement and brand me a judgmental simpleton, a Liberal wingnut, a Conservative wingnut, or some other terrible thing. I don't even want to get involved in political discourse! What happened?

And it's not just about guns, abortion, or whatever other controversial issue-of-the-day it may be. It's everything. Everything, every single topic, has become a fucking powder keg of reactionary backlash from people who only know me through someone else. For example, J.J. Abrams is going to direct the next Star Wars movie, but I discovered I had no incentive whatsoever to voice my opinion on the matter, when only a few weeks ago that would be the one thing I would have had the most incentive to continuously post about. Facebook has gotten to the point where I'm weary and utterly deflated just thinking about commenting on something as trivial as movie news. I keep thinking, "Ugh, what's my incentive? Someone here will just find an excuse to make it all blow up in my face." Some of my friends are assholes, and most of their other friends are even worse.

On the other hand, I have some of my "friends" address me only to chastise me for complaining or being negative--not to ask how I'm doing, not to say they miss me, but to scold me for my perceived bad attitude on the rare occasion that I do get real. Never mind the span of September to New Year's where I deliberately filtered out real-life attitudes, instead posting nothing but fluff. In October, especially, I turned my wall into a veritable country festival magazine. No good will leftover from posting all those pictures of pumpkins and Christmas lights, huh? Short memory, Facebook. Thanks for always making me out to be the bad guy.

In short, my fellow Facebook users have bullied me into submission and silence. I have no incentive to use it.

So I more or less stopped using Facebook, except when necessary, such as promoting my girlfriend's face-painting business, or responding directly to a post someone leaves on my wall. I get at least 20-30 notifications a day just by being an administrator of the face-painting page, so I have to keep signing in even when I don't want to.

I hate Facebook. It's not just vaguely hypocritical bluster anymore; I really, really hate it. I'm sick of it, and I deeply resent the abuse I've taken lately from my so-called friends, and their friends who join in. Just to punctuate the mostly-silent treatment I've been giving the infernal social network for the past week, I removed my profile pic and banner. It's almost too silly and inconsequential to even mention it, but the sentiment behind that move is the whole point: I don't need this.

Maybe after a little while, I will rejoin society. But consider this the start of Facebook's probationary period. I'll probably start posting pictures and links and comments again soon, but why? If every single thing I post, no matter how benign, gets twisted into some sort of town hall brawl, why the fuck would I want to post? Would you? I got burned one too many times in a row. People are assholes. No one asked for my opinion on fill-in-the-blank, but they didn't ask for yours, either... so why am I the one who spoke out of turn while you are the sole voice of reason on the entire Internet? (And, actually, behind the scenes, several times they did ask for my opinion, so I gave it.) Yeah, that's why you haven't seen my posting anything this week. Because why would I want to?