Y’all, I got a confession to make. I’ve been logging onto Facebook. I never deleted it. I stayed off of it mostly since I dramatically published my “Why am I leaving Facebook and Instagram?” post almost two and a half years ago. I didn’t delete my account because I had pictures on there and some old friends whose contact info I never got, and it was on my to do list to get those handled and delete the account since February of 2021. And it was nice that I didn’t since that still allowed me to occasionally dip onto the site if I wanted to look at a business’s Facebook page (yo, some places don’t bother doing websites anymore, just socials).
But lately, I’ve been doing more than reluctantly logging on when FB tries to block my ability to view a restaurant’s updated hours. I’ve been scrolling. Just a bit. The top three or four posts and then that’s it. I might even click on the “Show All Comments” section. I haven’t commented or liked any posts myself because that would give away that I’m not a cool offline hipster like I professed I was going to be. It’s awkward to make a big announcement about leaving and then just let yourself back in like nothing happened. At least it feels awkward to me.
But walking into a corner store feels awkward to me, so maybe I don’t have a great grasp of these things?
Regardless, I’ve been doing some reflecting on what I gave up for the last 2+ years. Alex and I have been having a lot of discussions about community lately. Alex has found mulitple communities that she’s a part of since moving here in 2018, PLUS she feels she’s a part of some online communities on (you guessed it) social media. And not the social media I’m on like Reddit and Tumblr. But the big boys: Facebook and Twitter. I’ve lived in Philadelphia since 2013, and I have rarely felt like I belong.
Why is that? I thought that maybe I needed more friends. Or maybe that at least I needed to hang out with my current friends more. Or maybe I should volunteer at any organization I stumbled across? That led to a lot of scattered volunteer obligations at all sorts of places all over the city, nothing that ever built momentum towards anything. Whenever depression comes to call, I blame my unhappiness on the fact that I’m stuck in a city I don’t want and that I’m not able to get back home. I romanticize Maryland as the place where I belong, where family, old friends, and good vibes reside. If I could just move back, then I would suddenly have all the social ties I could want. I could step right back into being 17, when I had the stability of church, family, and school providing foundations to my existence.
But I had a powerful realization the last time Alex and I visited Maryland. The life I lived when I was in high school hasn’t remained there, frozen in time, waiting for me to step back into it. Maryland has moved on, and so have I. I don’t have a place there, at least, not a ready made one like I sometimes believe. I have family there yes, but my younger sister isn’t 14 anymore. She’s got college and boyfriends and a bustling social life that has her in her own world all of the time. Even when I’m visiting, she’s got this outing to attend and that video call to log into. My mother’s quirks seem quaint enough when I’m visiting, but I’ve spent ten years undoing that damage. Should I really get closer to it? My friends have jobs and husbands and illnesses and lives that are not just going to high school. That’s why it easier back then. Most kids’ lives are organized around mandatory communities of your household, your school, whatever other clubs and groups you end up in so easily when you’re not an adult.
So that got me and Alex talking a lot about community. The groups you feel a part of, not just the collection of individual relationships you maintain. And that got me thinking a lot about why I’m regularly filled with longing for… something.
But what is it? Alex gave me all sorts of advice.
Get involved with a group centered around an activity I like. Well, I tried that. I went to several volunteer days at Wissahickon Valley Park, removing invasive plants and fixing up a fence that protects the basking grounds of snakes. Those were cool but somehow didn’t feel like they were totally scratching the itch. Most people there already knew someone else, and the one time I hung out with someone around my age after the work, we never contacted each other again.
Go to events I’m interested in. Man, I’ve been trying that since freshman year of college, sitting in at lectures and poetry readings, feeling like a complete outsider, a passing ghost that made no difference on the events whatsoever.
Post on the groups I’m in on Reddit. Girl, you don’t think I’m putting pictures of Hazel on cat subreddits? My precious kitty, cutest in all the lands, only gets 30 upvotes (out of a group of 642,000) and a couple of comments from people I don’t know and whom I never follow up with. You don’t think I’m putting my funny Stardew Valley observations in that subreddit? And two out of three of the comments are unhelpful advice from people who missed the point of the post (yeah, I know you can use a maple seed, an acorn, and a pinecone to make an energy bar, that’s what I meant when I said “eating handfuls of tree seeds”).
Alex admitted that, besides her weekly Digimon trading card game group (no, thank you) and her biweekly jam night (I don’t play any instruments), a lot of her sense of community is from social media. Facebook allows her to easily keep abreast of the general mosaic of people in her life that it simply wouldn’t be feasible to keep up with otherwise. Twitter lets her stay plugged in to indie game developers and other creatives. It’s a shame that the companies that provide this service are what they are, but they are providing a pretty useful service that has fundamentally shaped social life. And while my close family and friends have maintained contact with me through my social media sabbatical, there’s a huge host of people from throughout every walk of my life who have all but disappeared into my past. It only takes two to make an off-Facebook friendship work, but it takes a lot to make a sense of community work.
I was curious about what exactly it takes “to make a sense of community work.” I found an enlightening Vox article that put words to a lot of what I’d been feeling. The author cited a clinical and community psychologist who laid out the four necessary components of community: membership, influence, fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. Suddenly, the elements I’d been missing were making sense. Individual friendships don’t really give you a sense of membership. A one-time event where I sit alone, observe the poetry reading, and then leave afterwards without having ever talked to anyone or participated in anything doesn’t give you a sense of influence. A couple dozen anonymous upvotes doesn’t fulfill any needs, at least not for me. And where’s the shared emotional connection of coming to a few volunteer days at a park where it’s a different group of people each time, and even I only show up to one once every blue moon because it’s in a totally different neighborhood than where I live?
I realized that what I wanted was something regularly occurring, easy to access, and social in nature. I wanted my own Cheers bar where everyone knows my name. Or at least the regulars do. Or at least someone does. I wanted to be able to recognize people in the comforting structure of a recurring event. I wanted, as the article puts it, “outer rungs of [my] social network – other pet parents at the dog park, for example.”
I started to give some serious thought to the purpose of Facebook through this new lens of community. I used to think that someone who only interacted with you through liking posts but would never meet with you IRL was a “shallow connection.” That the real people who matter will take the time and effort to connect with you directly. Or at least sign up for my email newsletter :-)
But I realize now that I was missing a lot of the value of the vast network of Facebook friends. How comforting it was to see the occasional life update from an elementary school classmate. How meaningful it was to have a sense of greater family affiliation when that far-flung distant cousin loves my pictures of Hazel. How much nicer it was to get a chuckle from the wry observational post of a former professor as opposed to a random reblogged Tumblr meme that’s actually a Tweet of a screenshot of a subreddit I’ve never heard of.
I used to think that Facebook friends were fair weather friends, who were basically only there for you when it was easy for them, who don’t really have your back. But in the last two and a half years, I have been stabbed in the back by several people who were my “real” friends, who were willing to put in the effort to not only be my friend off of Facebook, but to manipulate and control me, and I played farther into their hands when I isolated myself to depend on only a handful of people. And I bet all those “fair weather friends” on Facebook are there waiting for me, to like the post I’m going to make about this essay and tell me they’ve missed my Hazel pictures. Just this morning I noticed that a person I haven’t talked to in probably six or seven years liked one of my photos from 2020 just a few days ago. I’ve been gone but not forgotten.
While all my previous grievances with Facebook are justified, there’s a point where you have to draw the line between taking meaningful action to make the world just a little bit better and when you’re martyring yourself in pursuit of the unattainable. I’m not going to stop using the Internet because Facebook and Google profit from the cookies they have all over. I’m not going to stop buying food because most easily accessible food producers pollute the land and abuse their workers. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and I’m not going to take down Mark Zuckerburg by refusing to participate in the modern day’s town square. I’m just going to make my personal world a little smaller and make myself a bit harder to connect with.
My (FB) friends, your prodigal daughter returns.
Thanks for reading! To be clear, I am still planning on maintaining my blog! If you rely on the email notifications through the Lasitas mailing list, never fear! I still plan on sending notifications of new posts out via email. I will still write my newsletters too, since I know that not everyone on my mailing list is on Facebook/on my Facebook, but if you’re friends with me on Facebook, you might find that some of the information overlaps as I start posting again. If I start posting again. I don’t know what my plans are.
If you’re not signed up for email notifications and want to be, you can sign up here! Or send an email to lasitasblog@gmail.com and request to be added to the mailing list!
I linked the article earlier, but in case you missed it, I highly recommend this Vox read about community: https://www.vox.com/22992901/how-to-find-your-community-as-an-adult
How do you feel like you have community in your life? Is it people you see at a certain business regularly? Is it through work? Maybe a games night? Alex and I go to a friend’s house for a monthly-ish game night, and it’s always a great time with great folks who have become dear to us!
Or maybe it’s through social media?
Stay well, out there, my friends, and maybe say hi to a neighbor or stalk someone’s Facebook to like an old photo. I think that’s rad.
Comments
Post a Comment