"Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy"

I secretly worry that the above sentiment expressed by comedian Louis CK is true most of the time. More than ever these days, myself included, people, children, we're all looking down into our mobile devices rather than at one another. I think the book was the first form this kind of distraction I ever employed as a young person. Except a book is not exactly a distraction. You're focused on a consistent narrative expressed by another human being which hopefully helps to connect you with human experience, rather than distract you from it. At least that's what it did for me. Reading is still very dear and intimate to me. But I find myself pulling out my smartphone in public and social settings for very different reasons than I would a book.

Louis CK's explanation of why he hates smart phones, though initially a bit crude and pessimistic (this is his comedic style) hits pretty close to home for me particularly in so far as it pertains to children. I don't hate smart phones on the whole but I do often hate the ways in which we as humans use them to disconnect from one another and I can only imagine that a smartphone in the hands of a child who has not yet learned the importance of looking up and being aware of whom and what is around you, eye contact when communicating and very simple things like not always blocking out unpleasant feelings that arise by playing Candy Crush, can be hugely problematic. Wait, I do that. But the point is I can also not do that. I know that I won't explode if I put my phone away and look at people. I can't imagine having had a cell phone, let alone a smart phone when I was in high school. I definitely hid books in my desk during boring lectures but a book doesn't text you back, doesn't send photo's, play music, and send alerts about the new release of Portlandia Seaosn 3 on Netflix. I feel so sorry for teachers who have to compete with smartphones to get the their student's attention. I just don't know how that works.

Feeling Like Unplugging

It's been a while. It's been a long while. There's been wedding plans made, breakthroughs/breakdowns, Mandela passing, "Scandal" Finale,  Beyonce's album,  and it's almost the end of another year on this planet. What I'm trying to say is, I'm ready to deactivate my facebook account for a while and make a start to the New Year Facebook free.

I always used to think that people who quit facebook were overdoing it. Like really? You can't handle it? You can't hang? But now I can see, we all have our reasons. We all have our limits and I've reached mine. It's not even forever, just for awhile. All I ever do anymore is think about what I did before facebook, what life was like before facebook and from what I can recall, I miss it. I don't know what I will accomplish when I leave but I do know that when or if I return, I don't want it to feel so much like a vast gaping hole of a headquarters for fragmented connections on important issues. I'm totally guilty of it. Vagueness, cryptic phrases, dropping and disappearing, posting and running, making too much of nothing. Making too little of something huge. But all through this media and never really touching anything or anyone.

You know what it's like?

Seven years ago, when I first started working at the job where I now currently employed I was given a copy of the time sheet I needed to fill out for full time civil service employees. That I know of, there is no "original" copy of this timesheet. If hard copies of this time sheet disappear forever, we don't have a pdf anywhere that I know. We operate in the stone age here as you may gather by now. So anyway, I have to make sure I have a stock of copies of this time sheet at all times, because if we run out of clean copies that's it. We aren't well equipped. Often I used to wonder, what did the original time sheet look like before it was copied into infinity? Where is it? Who created it? I will never know. I will only ever know copies, never the original. Never the source. That's how I feel about a lot of social media. That we as humans have become simulators of other peoples opinions, creations, ideas, but no longer care about the source, the origin. Everything is just copies, quotes, forwards and......likes. Very rarely do we make anything and then share it in a first person way anymore. Instagram is the new sharing device, literally. No one takes anyone places anymore. We armchair travel. I do it all the time. And because we armchair travel, shop, communicate and share, we don't actually move, touch, or feel the way we used to. We don't experience. We don't live the way we used to.

To some extent I understand that there is no going back, that giving up facebook does not mean taking back everything that came before because time has literally become re-circuited by social media. It gives us the illusion that we can hold on to everything. When I'm at my dad's and I see the old photos he's taken of me over the years, I take pictures of them with my phone. I don't need the hard copy anymore. I don't need the original, the source. I don't need the knowledge of darkroom photography, developing with chemicals, winding celluloid around a metal spool in a velvet bag. All the back story dissolves in a second as the photo is reborn in the world of social media as this new thing to people who don't know me, don't know my dad, don't know the story of the photo, how and why it was made. It is now remade for digital public consumption by people I know as well as people I will never meet, never know, people not even in this country.  It's astounding, amazing, frightening. Andy Warhol sure knew what he was talking about.

Anyway, quitting facebook is only one step in my attempt at liberating myself from my internet addiction. I would never delude myself to think I could give up the internet completely, nor do I feel it's necessary, at least not for me. And I still love my private IG account, because I only follow people that inspire me and it's very different than Facebook. It's easier for me handle. Facebook is a very special kind of monstrous hub that all internet roads seem to lead back to. It's all about who is using it and what it's being used for. And I've lost touch of what I really use it for. At first it was about keeping in contact with friends and old friends but then it was also a bit about stalking and spying. Then it was about games, some of them actually creative (remember graffiti?) and connecting to people that way. Then it became about sharing media, sharing ideas, sharing video, sharing photos, sharing statuses, sharing sharing sharing, liking liking liking, hating hating hating and changing your profile picture and "Scandal." LOL!

I just need a break. I need a break and if I come back, I hope to be like one of those people you never hear from. I have a friend and co-worker I really like who never ever does anything on his facebook account although he has one. And it used to annoy the hell out of me. Even though I see him like everyday and talk to him at least every week, I'd get really annoyed if we hung out on the weekend or something and I posted or tagged him in a commemorative photo knowing he would never look at it or respond to it! ARRRGGHH!! So what if I spent a lovely day with you and other mutual friends in real life! It's not real until you "like" the photo I took of you laughing uproariously and drinking a beer.

But at the same time I really admire him. It's not a struggle for him to stay away from facebook. He has other unrelated addictions probably. Facebook is not one of them. God Bless. I strive towards something like that.

It's not like I'm not still on twitter (not much), tumblr (still don't get it), flickr,  instagram and pinterest.

SO HAPPY 2014!!!! 

...just not on facebook.