Virtual social life

The other day I decided to close my account Facebook.

It's weird, I never thought myself as a person that spends a lot of time on social media, but it has taken me years to come to this conclusion.

In the last period I've spent quite some time to look for a "substitute". I've tried Mastodon, Nostr, Lemmy and even news aggregators.

I thought that cutting off social media, would make me more isolated or alienated from other people. But the more I tried to socially engage on other

platforms, the more I felt like I wasn't really enjoying myself and that no, I didn't want to socialize with strangers on the internet, I didn't want to

know what they were thinking or doing. I was just happy dedicating my free time to interests, meeting friends, watching tv series, reading... Literally

anything else.

I think having started to use internet during the era of the Web 1.0 I've always felt that social media was something I'd never asked for.

I remember when Facebook was a new thing, I couldn't really understand what was the fuss about. We already had forums and chats to discuss with strangers

(and start flames, lol). What I didn't understand at the time is that with social media now everyone could act as they were the main character of their own

life. They finally had a public to talk to. Having a nice breakfast or going to the beach, were not boring facts of every day people anymore.

Everybody could be interesting, everybody could behave like a star. And there were ratings too, measured in "likes".

That was at the beginning, when people had just figured out to not post about themselves using the third person. It was a millennial thing, back when

being a millennial you were considered young. Before Facebook and the first iPhone computers were for nerds. There was nothing cool about you saying you

were posting pictures online. Most of the time it was better to lie about your virtual social life to not be laughed at. I remember hiding from my real

social life in my endless internet researches, posting in forums and chatting with people. Nobody considered that "socializing". There was nothing "social"

about that, not in the common sense for the time.

Facebook popularized virtual interactions. It completely subverted the balance of things. Now if you weren't online, you were missing

out. If there would be a discussion on Facebook it would quickly turn in a very public thing. People would move these fights in the real life. The boundary

between the virtual and the real life seemed to have disappeared.

Then Gen X joined the conversation. They were totally unprepared for the online way of things. See here is the thing: back when discussions were held in forums

and chats there was anonimity. You shared how much you wanted to share. It was a very narrow interaction too. You didn't have an online "persona". Sure

people would be assholes anyways (sometimes even more so, since they did it in total anonimity). But we knew that wasn't real. We weren't sharing everything

with everyone. We would just chat about hobbies or fight about some stupid thing with some stranger we would never have to meet. And it was over.

Now the people the people we would fight with would be your racist uncle, that girl from your former high school who until then you thought it was a nice person,

your friends' friends. Up until that moment the worst discussion that you could have during holidays when you met your relatives, was some personal thing.

But with Facebook all your actions and thoughts were under scrutiny. And what at the beginning was just giving attention to a person's insignificant daily

moments, turned into a mass surveilance system. Everybody was surveiling each other.

I guess Facebook did something to contrast the social awkwardness. But the damage was done. Up until today most of the people I know, included myself,

speak online as they are announcing something to a greater public. I've never wanted this. Why should I replace this with something else?

We really speak in a different way when we know that the message we are sending is intended for a specific person or group of people.

Being under constant observation is training us to comply and be likable. I don't care about that.

So that's my take on social networks. I mean Facebook did the shittiest things in terms of ethics, so that played a role too.