• Beating up Facebook and being beaten

    Last September I wrote a post about leaving Facebook, but I’d left a while before the post. Not long after I deactivated my account and deleted the app from my iPhone, thinking I wouldn’t be back for a while. I didn’t give anyone a reason because I didn’t want it to be interpreted as a grand statement, but I had one – a personal one.

    I was depressed. Big shock, right? I’ve been depressed and writing or talking about being depressed for a couple years. But 2014 was bad. At times it was about as bad as it’s been. If you’ve never experienced clinical/major depression, I can’t make you understand it. It’s beyond my ability as a writer or speaker. It may be beyond anyone’s ability. Part of it was me – the way I’m wired. Another was a combination of events from my recent (moving) and remote past.

    I was fighting this battle with my own mind when news broke about Facebook doing research on its members to study emotional response. Or rather – it had done research in the past, and the first we were hearing about it was when they decided to publish.

    We could have a long discussion about reasonable (and unreasonable) expectations of privacy, informed consent, terms of service documents, and ethical research practices. We could but I won’t. I was depressed. I recalled my own experience doing psychological research on human subjects in school. Imagine yourself at your most fragile, vulnerable state. Then imagine you found out people were manipulating what you saw to see how it affected how you feel. I got very angry.

    End of story.

    Well, the end of that story.

    I’ve thought a lot about social media. I’ve thought about socialization. I don’t make friends easily, and people don’t stay put, so most of my friends are not local. Depression is not something anyone should suffer in solitude, so cutting off access to my friends (in hindsight) was not a great idea.

    Oh, and Lord help me. I bought Facebook stock. I had just enough in my account from Apple dividends to buy one share. So, as is my quirky, market custom – guaranteed to cost me more money than make me (due to transaction fees) – I bought the one share.

    I feel dirty, but I couldn’t very well stoop to buying stock and not reactivate my account.

    So here I am. You may mock me at any time.

  • Random statement of fact

    Honor Roll or not (though he is), my fifth-grader has the capacity to act much smarter than your pet. Mind you, I have nothing against your pet. I’m sure he/she is adorable and a beloved member of your family – but let’s not get carried away.

    I think it’s worth pointing out my fifth-grader is a person – a little human being. I’m not advocating cruel treatment of any animals, but I think we should all aim a little higher when we think about how we’re going to treat another person. 

    Yes, I know your bumper sticker was a joke. Believe it or not, I do have a sense of humor. I just didn’t think it was funny. Not even a little bit. Not when too many of us still treat our pets better than other people. 

  • You need to read this

    Nothing I say will do it justice, so I won’t try.

    You simply must read this powerful post by Jennifer Zobair: “The Religion of My Rape.”