I’ve been trying to avoid the news today. But just a moment ago I took a one-minute scroll through Facebook and learned that Tom Petty is dead, or near enough. “Full cardiac arrest, no brain activity, DNR” etc etc.
He was 66.
For a moment, that news provided a diversion from the day’s dominant story: yet another mass shooting event, this time in Las Vegas. 50+ killed and hundreds injured (mostly probably from the ensuing stampede) when somebody opened fire from a 30th floor hotel window onto an open field filled with a crowd for a country music festival, headliner Jason Aldean running from the stage once he figured out what was going on.
And so once again all the typical responses… the meaningless “thoughts and prayers,” the relentless outrage, the exhortations to talk about gun control -v- the exhortations to not talk about gun control “so soon” after so many people have been senselessly slaughtered by the kinds of weapons that nobody should have access to, at least not legal access, but then you know how that works, if guns are outlawed yada yada yada…
So this morning when I started to do my typical mindless scrolling… I just realized, “today is the day that Facebook became insufferable.”
And then I had to resist the temptation to actually put that thought on Facebook. I’m sure it would have offended a lot of people who felt righteously, grievously offended that so many people they never knew had been killed, because that’s what we’re all conditioned to do now when this happens again and again and again and again etc ad infinitum ad nauseam…
Later in the day, I thought of something that I read or heard about Hugh Hefner after he had his last wank last week at age 91. Somebody pointed out that Hefner had made his fortune largely “on masturbation.”
Now, I would say, that Mark Zuckerberg is the contemporary equivalent, though not strictly in the literal sense.
It is almost ironic that Facebook doesn’t permit anything that is even slightly, obliquely pornographic (i.e. “no female nipples” – regardless of their “artistic” merit), because arguably all of the content on Facebook is some form of mental masturbation.
It is a billion people a month (many several or even dozens of times a day) “getting off” on their own expressions of moral outrage, or gentle metaphysical platitudes, or pictures of their babies, or whatever the fuck floats their boat.
With a user base measured in the billions, Facebook creates the illusion of an audience of thousands when in most cases – i.e. those that are not already celebrities and thus have a large “social media following” (George Takei comes to mind, and remember he got his start being a spaceman on TeeVee 50 years ago) our posts only show up on a few dozen other users feeds. It’s somewhere between an echo chamber and a masturbatorium – a word I had never heard before the actor Brian Cox used it in a scene from the movie “Running With Scissors” : “You can’t go in that room, that’s my masturbatorium”.
Facebook is a masturbatorium that we let everybody in to.
Anyway, when I looked at Facebook this morning, it just seemed like a relentless rerun of years of self indignation. With every post I felt like “where have I seen this before?” Oh yeah, right here on Facebook the last time. And the time before that. And the time…
So… fuck it.
One of the things that got me hooked on Facebook years ago was when web browsers started to offer the “pin tab” feature – where you always had a small tab conveniently situated on the edge of your browser window for websites that your return to often.
Once THAT feature was enabled, I basically had Facebook at my disposal all the time. It was just one click away. It was like when I discovered “one hit pot” back in 1969. I’ve been stoned on Facebook ever since.
And that (I think) was before it all went mobile, and Facebook became the thing that I went to almost impulsively on my phone. Wait, who am I kidding? “Almost impulsively?” No, it was definitely impulsive. Like a rat in a cage, pushing the button for another endorphin pellet. Dozens of times a day. I supply the content, Zuckerberg gets the money. Who are we kidding.
And don’t even start me on the fucking Russians.
Lately I’ve been saying “I feel about Facebook the way I felt about scotch and vodka just before I quit drinking (almost 30 years ago).
And today, I dunno, something just finally snapped.
I closed all “pin tabs” on my browsers.
And I deleted the Facebook app on my phone. I replaced it (in the dock on the bottom of the home screen) with the podcast app. Maybe I’ll listen to more podcasts.
But I did go back to Facebook for a minute, just to confirm my suspicions. But instead of gun-violence induced righteous indignation, I got the news that Tom Petty had a heart attack and died at age 66.
Well, fuck me, I’m 66, too.
Or, wait… maybe he’s not dead?
Oh, fuck it. Ya just can’t believe anything any more.
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Update 171005: Yes, I violated my own quarantine and posted a link to this from my Facebook page. Save one comment re: Scott Kozicki needing a haircut, I have not posted anything to the Infinite Random Trivia Generator all week. If you care to comment on what I have written/posted above, please share those sentiments in the comments section here. The boycott now resumes…,