Facebook: An irrelevant rant

For reasons far too dull to explain here - actually I've seen far duller things explained here, but anyway - for reasons far too dull to explain here I was recently obliged to log in to Facebook for the first time in three years.

Once my business had been unsatisfactorily concluded, my thoughts turned to my Facebook network. "I know people who actually use this," I thought. "I wonder what has become of them." And so, with a flick of my thumb, I was off.?

Immediately I was affronted by blaring music. It was early. My kids were asleep. Cortisol flooded my nervous system. An "inspirational" video was playing unsolicited music. Horrified, I tapped my screen in an effort to escape the noise. The video became larger. The music swelled. "Inspiring" platitudes were everywhere. I muted my phone while my nerve endings sizzled.

Exiting the video, I made my way through a bank of bland sponsored posts before entering reams and reams and reams of "Suggested for You" posts about animals and sports and animals playing sports and food that looks like things and things that look like food and derivative puns and reductive memes and not a single thing being quite as it seems in precisely the most obnoxious way imaginable.

You can?imagine it, but barely.

And then I remembered, "this isn't why I'm here. There are people actual people that I know. This is the whole point of Facebook, isn't it? But where are they?"

And then I saw them. "People You May Know". At last. Something relevant. With great effort, I focused on the screen. Features unfolded before me. Hair. Chins. Eyes. Nasolabial folds. More hair. All belonging to complete strangers. I scrolled across. More people I had literally never seen in my entire life. Again and again until... wait... a person with whom I had two mutual friends. I had heard of them. Once. In a group. But we had never actually?met. But who are these people? Who are these faces? And why did The Great Algorithm, in all its wisdom, believe we should connect? Are we destined to be friends? Should we perhaps argue about sports? Does one of us need to correct the other on the exact circumstances surrounding the sack of Rome? What, really, is the meaning of all this?

I began to feel icky, sticky, like I had been licked and was presently covered in saliva. "Is that you, Zuckerberg?" But no. It couldn't be. He's too far away. And besides, this was less tangible. A fog? No. A mist? Not quite. A miasma? Let's see:

Miasma: an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere which surrounds or emanates from something.

Perfect. Facebook - at least my Facebook - can best be described as a miasma.

I kept scrolling until, at last, an actual?person that I actually knew. "Oh miracle of miracles," I thought as I lurched down the feed and towards this human oasis. This paragon of friendship. My eyes focused. "Who are you?" I read the name. It was my wife's cousin's ex-boyfriend, Carl. His cherry red lips formed a perfect "O" around his dark hollow mouth, as though he was surprised and disappointed to see me too.?

I scrolled on. Sports. Potatoes. More sports. A video of a grown man measuring his wife's buttocks with a ruler. An endless stream of non sequiturs until "oh Sweet Mercy, another actual?human."?

It was Carl. Again.

And that was enough. I closed and uninstalled the Facebook app. "Let's give it a while, Carl," I thought. And then I had a good long shower.