Facebook In The Time Of Cholera
I have a confession to make.
I’ve blocked a dozen or so people from my Facebook feed lately. To be precise, I’ve temporarily unfollowed them, which means that I can still see their posts if I want to, they can see my posts, and I’ll know if they tagged me. I interact with them in groups. So, they haven’t been put into complete Cyberia. But, for the moment, I’ve hidden their timeline posts from my daily view.
Of those, only one has been someone I politically disagree with. The rest are people that actually share my politics. I haven’t unfollowed them because we disagree, or because I can’t process alternative viewpoints. Please. That’s kinda my job.
As one of the wisest people I know, former NBA star Jalen Rose, often says, people are put into your lives for exactly four reasons: to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. I have unfollowed people who are at the moment not adding or multiplying during a time in which I need to be clear-headed. It’s that simple. I have unfollowed the scolds. I have unfollowed the pedants. I have unfollowed the shrill.
I have unfollowed them for now, not forever, and not because I disagree with them. And I don’t want them to change! I have unfollowed them because they aren’t helping my mental state. Indeed, for a time, they were hurting it.
I wouldn’t ask anyone to stop posting what you are posting, no matter how shrill or strident. I couldn’t. It’s therapy for you. You need to post what you post. Please don’t stop. But understand — for the exact same reason — I need to excise the shrill and the strident from my view, just now. This is my therapy. This is to protect my mental state, as much as your post is cathartic to yours. I think our social media feeds have a dramatic impact on our mental health. But we can control that impact, and I surely do.
I know I am not the only one who feels this way. Yesterday, I saw one of my Facebook friends note that it was OK to block political posts on your feed for a very similar reason, and a few commenters really ripped into him. “You are driving your head into the sand!” they said. “Now is not the time to be uninformed!”
If you think someone is uninformed because they have unfollowed your posts…well, I admire your self regard.
I do not use Facebook to inform myself. I use it for dog videos. I use it for speaking, writing, and travel tips from my three favorite Facebook groups. That’s it. I maintain a scrupulously well-balanced media diet of primary sources. I have enormous respect for the journalists my company has been privileged to serve, including ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. They do the work. They have the investigative resources to doggedly pursue that which the average blog cannot, and I value that. I also read liberal and conservative viewpoints regularly from The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Weekly Standard, and more. I don’t have much time for news outlets that aren’t based on investigative journalism and primary sources. I also don’t have much time for the stridently pitched editorial/opinion pieces that many people share from the likes of HuffPo, Vox, BuzzFeed and other sites. But that’s me.
To say, then, that my unfollowing certain voices in my feed is to shut out certain viewpoints is a bit simplistic. I also haven’t shut out my support — financial and otherwise — of the causes I believe in. And I certainly am not lacking for facts. I’ve shut out a relentless drumbeat of outrage on my feed because it causes me pain, and I don’t need that pain to take action or lend my support.
To close, I’ll just say that I am in 100% agreement with the scientist and writer David Brin, who believes that we have become literally addicted to what he calls the “righteous indignation” of social media — that the feeling that washes over us when we experience these emotions triggers chemicals in our brain just as powerful as the ones released from gambling addiction, or alcoholism. Righteous indignation turns to outrage, which in turn becomes rage. In Brin’s words, these “chemically-mediated states of arousal…self-reinforce patterns of behavior.” (more on that here: http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction...)
I have unfollowed some people, at least for now, for this reason: to protect myself from becoming addicted to outrage. It isn’t going to help me. That’s a personal choice. It might not be your choice. But if it is, I’m posting this just to say that I think you are OK.
So: do stay informed. Do try to understand both sides. But you do NOT have to do it on Facebook.
And given how Facebook has manipulated your feed for emotional experimentation in the past and likely continues to do so, it seems to me that this might in fact be the worst place to do it.
