F=ML

Let's face it. I was an addict. I still am. Clearly I'm fiending, otherwise I wouldn't be writing melodramatic love letters (did I mention I downed a bottle of red last night?) to the thing I have been in the longest free-standing relationship with. It's kinda pathetic. And maybe a little sweet. I guess it proves that you can still have strong feelings, even for inanimate objects.

I don't think that facebook was ever entirely bad for me. But it became too all consuming. It was, quite seriously, taking over my life.

In fact, I did a little mental addition (ok, fine I used the calculator on my iPhone). In toto, over the past five years (I joined fbook in 2005) I have spent (with the estimate that I average around 5 hours a day on facebook - in college it was more, more recently it was a bit less) over 9,125 hours of my life logged on. That's 547,500 minutes. And thanks to that trusty song from Rent, we all know, there are 525,600 minutes in a year. Hopefully that just put my usage in perspective for you.

"How do you measure, measure a year?"

I have spent over a year of my life staring at a computer screen. When, I think about all of the other things I could have been doing - the live conversations with friends I could have been having, the sex I could have been loving, the books I could have been reading, the knowledge I could have been acquiring, the sites I could have been seeing - I feel dumb, useless, a tragic product of Western culture and society. My life has gone to waste. It was free time that became used time that became wasted time. At no cost but my own.

Yet, it was always there for me, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, in New York and San Francisco, in college and post-undergraduate life... It's been more friend than foe, no? So, how did things get so out of control?

inter-vent-ions 1.

It's getting so lonely inside my apartment.
I don't know if I should lick my wounds or say what worries me instead.
There's an aching inside my head. It's saying.....don't give in.

But your face is everywhere. That scowl is haunting me.

I feel uninformed, lost without a trace. Like being dropped in downtown Hong Kong without a map. Anger builds at the thought that such an irritating creation like you could bring me such subtle pleasure.

Sweaty hands. Adrenaline coursing through my veins. Tempted to say to hell with my bull shit and just get a fix.

The air is crisp. My mood is colder.

Another sleepless night.

I miss your good night kiss.

Since U Been Gone

They say it takes 21 days to break a habit. I'm 72 hours in.....

and I feel like a toilet.

With all the shit coming my way over my departure from the book of faces, it's hard not to feel like a repository for poo-pooing. At first, I must admit, there was a drizzle of encouragement from supportive friends and allies. But then the clouds broke, and the face of Mark Zuckerberg appeared, and fire and brimstone rained down from the sky in a downpour of judgment, guilt, and fear that took me by social networking surprise.

And I’m not just talking about my friends. Facebook, you were the first to guilt me. Yes, you.

For those of you who have never deactivated your facebook account before, I’d like to let you in on a little secret. Before you can proceed with the deactivation process, you are confronted by a screen that desperately attempts to pull you back from the ledge you are about to jump off of.

“Are you sure you want to deactivate your facebook?” it says. (read: put the gun down).

Then, if that wasn’t enough to make you think twice, it says the most ridiculous statement you have ever read:

“Your 1,643 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.” (read: you will soon have 0 friends).

Wait, so let me get this straight. With this deactivation, you’re saying that I will be friendless, phone-less, e-mail-less, and homeless? Well, in that case…..

Seriously though, that’s some crazy guilt right there. Like, bananas crazy. But it only gets better. There are…. pictures.

Yup, at the top of the deactivation screen there are pictures – pulled from your tagged photos no doubt – and above them, they say, “Michael will miss you. Claire will miss you. Jason will miss you, etc” using some of the names of your 1,643 “friends.”

Let’s see. I doubt Michael cares much about me since the last time I spoke to him was when we were in high school. As for Claire, well, she’s in rehab, so I don’t think I’m what she’s really missing right now. And as for Jason, well, I’ve never met Jason, so, he can miss me all he wants but, I could give a rat’s ass.

That right there is some grade A, high quality, award winning guilt. And if there’s anything I resent more than stone washed jeans and a matching jean jacket, it’s guilt. But what I really despise is the implication on this page that by proceeding to deactivate, you are somehow committing social suicide. This just in ladies and gents: without facebook your life is over.

This is, in large part, what I dislike about American culture. If you’re not doing what the rest of the kids are doing or if you don’t look like the rest of the kids or you don’t act like the rest of the kids, your life is somehow over. Why? Because of a little thing called the “tyranny of the majority.” Alexis de Tocqueville coined this term in his book called “Democracy in America” (1835). de Tocqueville views the “tyranny of the majority” as a menace to American democracy and society because it seeks to destroy dissent and wipe away individual freedoms, choices, and opinions, and any possibility of subversion. In other words, when a majority rule or majority race or majority culture dominates a given society, it tyrannizes it by dictating and enforcing the majority’s views, norms, and ethos upon it, thus creating a cultural and social paradigm that everyone must uphold. (We’ve seen this play out over the course of American history all too well, particularly when it comes to understanding race, gender, sexuality and immigration status).

In light of de Tocqueville’s shrewdness, I’d venture to say that the tyranny of facebook is upon us. I mean, everyone’s on facebook these days. Chances are your 87 year old grandmother in Topeka, Kansas has an account. So that leaves very little wiggle room for those of us (any of us) seeking to remove ourselves from it. And facebook doesn’t want you to. That’s where the tyranny comes in. The “majority” doesn’t want to be contradicted. It doesn’t believe in alternative ways of being, it believes in its own self-righteousness, its own mythology, its own power. And if you challenge it, god help you, you just might find your own peace of mind. Or that you’re covered in a lot of other people’s bull shit.

S.O.F.

The phone calls/text messages/fireballs have begun.

"Peterrrr, where are you?"

"Is everything ok?"

"I can't find you! What's going on?"

I think the only person who hasn't expressed any alarm at my disappearance is my mother. Hmmm, maybe I should have added her as a friend.....Le sigh.

I think, therefore I disappear.

I’ve read those stories, you know, the ones about people vanishing. They are curious tales, with provocative headlines in local rags and the New York Times alike. More often than not I read about missing children – usually young, white girls - and I’m just completely dumbfounded. My thoughts wander to the chilling experience of abduction or torture, the utter thought that to have gone "missing” (as the headline usually reads) is to somehow have been forcibly removed from your reality. Because, well, who actually wants to be abducted? or end up on the proverbial milk carton? or just disappear out of thin air at your local drugstore?

I’d venture to say: no one.

No one wants to be forgotten, to live in a shed in the back of a creepy guy’s house, or transform their entire life to the point of being unrecognizable to one’s self or others. I mean, that is why we have tombstones, Megan’s Law, and group therapy, right? But that's because the thought of non-existence, of vanshing without a trace, is beyond human comprehension. It is why we call the police and create search parties when people go missing. To disappear is to fundamentally transgress that liminal space of knowledge and tread upon the one concept that humans have never been able to come to terms with – “the unknown.”

My friend Katie once told me a story about a man who worked in the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York. On September 11, 2001, he was going about his daily routine when something utterly unexpected happened. He walked out of the South Tower and began to live a completely different life. That’s right. He left his desk, his wife, his children, his name, his entire identity behind. He is as missing to his former co-workers who survived or died in the terrorist attack as he is to his own parents and relatives who have no idea what happened to him on that day. He disappeared, along with thousands of other New Yorkers that September, and lives on in the memories of the people he knew before. Except, he’s alive. He saw an opportunity at an inopportune time to radically alter his life. He utilized a pretext of destruction to create something new. I’m not saying that I agree with this man. But, I must admit, he had some pretty big balls. Maybe it wasn’t just big balls, but a big desire to start a new life in a system that only really allows for one.

Think about it.

There’s no "log off" button from life, except, well, death. But for those of us who are not contemplating suicide or euthanasia, there's no real abrupt escape. And in this hyper technological era of GPS navigation, Facebook, and ubiquitous cell phone usage, the problem more often than not is that we can never go missing. We can always be found. And the act of being “known” requires a persona, an identity, and a performance to accompany it. But like most Broadway shows, the eight shows a week routine becomes taxing. You love your audience, and hopefully, your castmates, but, when you step back and realize that reality exists outside of that theatrical venue, you may or may not start looking for the exit signs. While it may be true that all of life’s a stage, maybe we don’t always have to play the part we’ve been handed in its traditional constraining fora. We can become president, shave our heads and assault paparazzi with an umbrella, or cheat on our partners multiple times without them knowing it. I’m not saying that our unconventional, revolutionary actions will always be the right ones, but we should take comfort, not revulsion, in the possibility of their raison d’etre. After all, as the old adage goes, “change is inevitable – except from a vending machine.”

On the morning of June 19th, 2010, I was going about my daily routine when something utterly unexpected happened. I opened my infamous, gloriously addictive, unflattering Facebook.com account, went to the privacy settings, located a little known button called “Deactivate” and clicked.

I am still alive. I’m pretty sure I’m breathing. I’m not in a shed in the back of a creepy guy’s house. Everything is as it usually is, except, I vanished.