I spent most of the weekend fighting off some kind of illness. I don’t know exactly what I had, but it made me tired, dizzy, and short of breath. Not a head cold, that’s for sure. I’m pretty sure it’s mostly gone, just in time for me to return to work Monday morning, yay.
I don’t have a topic for tonight, so I will just talk about things as they come to mind.
NaNoWriMo approaches quickly! By the end of the week, actually. Just a reminder for any and all of my readers, I won’t likely be posting as much on the blog during the month of November; gotta use all my writing brain for NaNoWriMo. I will post here, but it will likely be quick links and updates on my writing progress, as well as any cute stories or pithy comments I can think of. Basically, I’ll post here the things I tended to post on Facebook.
Because, oh, yeah, I’m leaving Facebook forever as of the end of the month, too. That’s a thing that’s happening. Facebook is apparently dead-set on collecting money and eyeballs from right-wing extremists, to the detriment of democracy and United States government. And in response, I’m leaving and I encourage anyone else who can, to leave as well. There are other communities in which you can find your friends and family, I promise you. For a small instance, I offer you this one.
I watched a Vlogbrother video today, from Hank, and he repeated something that I had heard him say before but haven’t really internalized. He said that we now live in corporate spaces. What does that mean? To me, it means that while we may connect, and have fun, and have interesting discussions in them, we are subject to corporate rules—not government rules, not ethical rules, but the rules of the corporations that run the space. We don’t have voting rights. We don’t even have human rights that digital people may have.
Extending that analogy, then, the only impact we can have on corporate spaces are leveraging the things that corporations care about, and Facebook cares about only one thing. Well, it cares about money, because it’s owned by a billionaire, and billionaires are dragons who sit atop a mountain of pilfered wealth, but Facebook also cares about reach and engagement. OK, OK, that’s three things, bear with me here, I’m improvising this.
Bottom line, if we want to change Facebook, it’s unlikely our government (or any government) will ever have the will or power to regulate social media. In the meantime, we can bend it by denying it our attention or engagement. I know many of you can’t leave, because of communities or people you have to stay in contact with and can only do so through Facebook. I am potentially losing track of important people to me, but I am committing to finding other methods to do that. Because leaving Facebook is a moral imperative for me.
Monopolies always seem unbeatable, until they are finally beaten. Just like bullies, or tyrants. But we have to do it together. In some kind of… united… state. I think you see what I’m saying. Right?