A Facebook Life

I don’t live a Facebook life. You know what I’m talking about: those social media post-ers that always seem to be traveling or playing with their kids/grandkids, always looking great and never having a bad word to say.

I call “balderdash” (actually I call something a little harsher but this is a family publication).

I don’t get along with my entire family; there are some I keep my distance from and others that I can’t wait to embrace. I get agitated when wondering in lean times how I’m going to make payroll. When I’m tired, I look it. Everyday is not the best day ever nor do I pretend it is. Let’s face it: some days are just plain hard.

I’m not saying I don’t enjoy Facebook – or other social media platforms for that matter. They provide the chance to reconnect with folks I may not have seen or heard from in decades. To me, this is the true purpose of social media – touching base with people who you were once close to but perhaps drifted away from. I also enjoy getting recommendations to places or services.

“Don’t eat there,” one may say citing poor service or bad food. “Call this fence repair company,” recommends another. These are great examples of how social media should work, in my opinion.

But that’s not the way it unfolded. Social media has given a platform to just about every crazy idea and group … and encourages others to join in. Whereas prior to its arrival, it was difficult for the disconnected to, well, connect, after the launch of various social media sites people were able to feed their paranoia or conspiracy theories (think pizzagate). While these events may cause eye-rolling at best, at worst violence has resulted from some of these incidents.

Then there are the real whack-a-doodles like Alex Jones of InfoWars fame that declared, among other things, that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School never happened (thankfully on Aug. 5 a jury decided he owed one Sandy Hook family $45.2 million in punitive damages for spreading lies about that tragedy).

Maybe I’m ignorant but I don’t think he would have found an audience without social media to prop him – and his ideas ­– up.

I may be wrong, though; I mean scams have been around for decades; remember chain letters? They survived because someone bought into them, paying countless sums to avoid “devastating consequences.”

So while I hit the “delete” button on my computer to nix the most recent TikTok challenge I may instead search to find out what some old classmates are up to.