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Get off Facebook (And I Mean NOW)!!!


Note: This was written for friends and family on my personal Facebook page.  While it was intended to stay that way, I decided it was general enough to turn into a blog post here.  While not comic specific, I believe EVERYONE can benefit from getting off Facebook!  

Enjoy!

Hey everyone!

For those of you wondering where I’ve been I’ve got a story to tell YOU! You might not like it, but as you’ll see in a few paragraphs, not liking things on Facebook has never been a problem for most of you. But it has been for me. I made a decision a few months ago that would change my life in ways I could not have imagined. When the lockdown occurred and there wasn’t much to do except sit around the house feeling fine, I felt that Facebook would be a saving grace in the world. After all, the website was built with the intention of bringing people together. Of sharing our interests. Of being able to say “hello” to a good friend who was 3,000 miles away! Oh, and cat pictures. We love to share lots and LOTS of cat pictures! While I planned my strategy for how Facebook would be involved in my everyday life, I was fully aware that the platform had become political.

That people had strong opinions that they shared from time to time. Overall, though, it was still a great way to keep in contact with everyone. Not long into the shutdown though things got bad. Oh boy…did things get bad. Honestly, I thought that since people were stuck inside there would be lots of time to stream shows on Netflix (or Crunchyroll if you’re a nerd like me). It would be a good time to clue people in on what you’re reading (for the record, I’m currently reading “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon and “Career of Evil” by J.K. Rowling…and the Bible. It ALWAYS helps to read the Bible!). I was really hoping social media would help me get through a tough time (a tough time we ALL would be sharing)! Things didn’t quite turn out the way I hoped they would. Instead of friends checking in with one another people decided to get loud. They decided to be angry all the time.

They spent all their time either hating everything Trump did or loving everything he did. I’ve seen Christians not acting like Christians and friends treating other friends like enemies. I’ve seen people cherry pick facts and opinions and shout them from the rooftops every day as if the world honestly cared about what they thought. I know people who express opinions that they felt very strongly about (which they are allowed to do, but it’s hard to respect them when they also remove comments from their page they don’t agree with). It got so bad I found myself removing many people from my feed. So many people were removed that I started to wonder what the point of being on Facebook even was anymore. What was the point of talking to people who didn’t want to hear your opinion? What was the point of using a platform where there was more shouting than discourse?

What was the point on being on here if it wasn’t FUN?!

I realized that while I had all the time in the world to be on Facebook, it was no fun watching people virtually tear each other apart and demine one another as heartless pigs, government sheep, or brainwashed hippies (which is apparently still a thing these days). There is so much fighting on this platform I see between friends who insist on being right, I shake my head at the stupidity. Heck, the last time being “right” about benign issues mattered to me was when I was 10 years old and my other biggest concern was how I was going to save enough money for a Sega Saturn. I realized that not only was Facebook not helping me, it didn’t appear to be helping anyone else either. Saying you like (or dislike) Trump over and over again doesn’t make you a rebel; it just makes you sound obsessive.

Removing people disagreeing with a stance does not make you a peacekeeper, it shows that you have thin skin and that you can’t handle other people’s opinions. Sharing your opinions in the most abrasive way possible doesn’t make them any more important, you just come off as obnoxious. So, I decided to do something radical: I deactivated my Facebook account and decided to call people on the phone (you know...the main feature on those $1,200 bricks we buy) on a near daily basis. I realized that what would be best for me would be to talk to people over the phone, or over Zoom, or anything but over a social network where people treat their personal page as their own personal soapbox. In doing this experiment I was much happier, I have had wonderful conversations with people, and we’ve been able to help each other get through this crazy thing called life.

I haven’t missed Facebook since I got off it and at this point, I doubt I ever will. Now, this does beg the question of WHY I’m back here if I hate it so much! Simply put…I am beefing up my Shopify store and connecting it on Facebook is one way to get my merchandise out there. No, the point of this post is NOT to try and sell you stuff (I will not even mention my store name)! The point is depending on whether this is successful for me, I might have to keep the account reactivated purely for financial reasons. But ten minutes back on the site and it is amazing how much worse everyone’s gotten. If I was making a judgment on many of your lives based solely on your Facebook profile, I would have little choice but to deduce that some of you are the most miserable people on the planet (and knowing what you have going for you in your life, that is a VERY strange vibe to be getting from Facebook)!

So, while I’m back on Facebook trying to build my business, I likely won’t be interacting with many of you on this platform. I graduated from high school years ago and am not in the mood to engage in such childish drama again. However, if you want to call me sometime, talking is always nice! In fact, I encourage everyone here to take serious time off Facebook and try to connect with people on a human level again. Phone conversations are scary, but they are great. Interacting with people without using social media as a buffer reminded me of how great some of my friends were. How sad it is that through Facebook, I started to wonder why I liked these people in the first place, only to talk to them in person and be reminded of how great they were?! I acknowledge the irony of writing about how off-putting people are on Facebook while writing a post that could be considered off-putting by many. There’s an irony there, I know. But if you got to the end, hopefully you will be encouraged to get off this waste-of-time platform and engage with the people you claim to love again.

It did wonders for me! Oh, and my wife is great! She’s certainly helped me get through this time and without her I would be a very lonely man during all of this. I just wanted to point that out since that’s the sort of positivity I rarely see on here anymore.

Your Comic Book Guy - Kevin

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