Back To Facebook

 

Shortly after creating an account with a fake birth date, I changed my mind and

started to believe that I would do better without Facebook. Studies showed that

people could get anxieties and depression from cyberspace by comparing with 

others, even though or maybe because they were "friends." This seemed to reflect

badly on us as a vain, jealous, and brittle bunch and as an average member of

the human race, I'd better not risk it. It helped that after some time of no use,

I lost the credentials and couldn't recover the account. Then a decade passed.

 

It was jiu-jitsu that brought me back to Facebook. My school used it as a 

message board and Henry had a group there. Friday, I tried for the third (or

maybe the fourth) time to login onto my account, using one password that I

remembered. The programmers must have fixed or broken something as, unlike in

the past, my password was accepted and I did not need to provide two references

to prove identity. Instead, I was asked to confirm the intention to proceed

after a long absence. That was it and after clicking on 'YES,' I was in! 

 

It was like entering a house I used to live in and had since abandoned. The last

entry of the activity log showed my saying happy birthday to a former professor,

in Sep 2012. A new list of "friends" found by some algorithm was waiting for me 

to connect. The old contacts were still there, reminding me that I had lost them

in the physical world. The last one I shook hands with was my professor in 2019.

Everything has to go through the test of time.

 

I went to the academy's page for its 11-year's worth of content. The posts and

videos there felt like a blackhole, sucking me in, and 10 hours later spitting

me out. My jiu-jitsu might not have improved as a result but, man, I came away

knowing much more about my training partners, e.g., who was a cop and who was a

vet, who worked in real estate and who fought wild fires, etc. As the students

were often reminded to leave their ego at the door, on the mat we talked about

almost nothing besides the art. So nine months into training, I had known little

about my partners outside of jiu-jitsu. I should have felt more excited at these 

discoveries but strangely, I did not. I was more impressed at some Jean Jacques

quotes and videos instead. One thing was for sure: my school rocked on the Web.

 

I think I will come back to visit Facebook often from now on. At almost 50, am I

mature enough not to get burned? Let's see.

 

[7grizzly]

回複 '暖冬cool夏' 的評論 : Thank you, 暖冬, for reading and sharing your experience with social media.
I only visit the school's page and wouldn't spend time exploring Facebook. It shouldn't be too hard, they are not that interesting.

Have a great week.

[暖冬cool夏]

It was like entering a house I used to live in and had since abandoned.
+1
I am not a Facebook fan either. I created an account around 2010 or probably earlier when my former boss wanted to connect me one day. We later connected in Linkedin. I did not visit my Facebook account for more than a decade now. My friends are basically Chinese and WeChat is good enough. I don't have a Twitter account at all.
Social media can easily suck us in, consuming us much time. It's like a black hole:)) I am trying to cut my time on WXC too.