I lived my first 22 years in middle Tennessee. Then four years in the NC piedmont. Three years in Denver, to complete a PhD. Then a year teaching in Alabama, another seven years teaching in north Georgia, and, finally, I've lived here in the same house in eastern North Carolina since 1994. My whole purpose, honestly, with Facebook, is to keep in touch with family in Tennessee, and my far-flung community of fellow musicians, poets, scholars, and crazy people all over the world. Your comments here interested me very much, and I discovered things I did not know. All I'm saying is I keep in touch with my local community in various ways, but not so much via Facebook (a little, though.) I doubt Facebook does much that it can't monetize. One day I think it's bad, the next, good. Thanks for being thoughtful.
I prefer not to post where I live, I know it's not secret with all the data available. I was talked into Facebook years ago by a college friend, ( I didn't like the idea.) Then all my cousins started 'friending' me. Eventually I got up to about 50 friends then a few more plant people.
I belong to several 'Florida' facebook groups about native plants, pollinators, etc. People usually post their county so you can use that with the other info to compare with your place. Especially during Covid, I found comfort with people sharing their native plant experience and pictures of life in their yard. Same thing on Instagram, hashtags make it pretty easy to find things I'm interested in. I've connected with people I don't know and feel like I belong to a 'community'. I've found out about events that I'm interested in and are local.
I don't have too much contact with people I know on facebook, it seems like a bad place to post too much personal info. I agree with Erika, the people posts are superficial showing a good view, many people I actually know post nothing.
Thank you, Janisse, for once again voicing (so well) what we're all fretting silently about. We have to talk about these things openly and fearlessly, and you inspire us to do that. The loss of sense of place is so sad -- and it's only one of the many ills Facebook (and all of social media) is inflicting on us. I worry so much about young minds, especially. For example, "Internet Gaming Disorder" is a new(er) diagnosis listed in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
I never really adopted Facebook that much and it's been years since I even had an account, so I can't say specifically. I just know that over the last year I could see from my newsletter traffic that Twitter and Instagram weren't doing enough for me to warrant the frustration I have with them so I killed those too. I know my friends in other artistic endeavors who DO rely on those apps for engagement to make their living are frustrated similarly as you with Facebook: recent changes are affecting the virtual landscape for creative folks. Which isn't a surprise, really. As the product, users of social media are probably wise NOT to lean too heavily on these "free" means to market their work because they have never existed for that reason. These tech companies don't want us buying from each other, they are selling US in expectation we will buy from the a-holes buying ads on the apps and making the a-holes at the top into billionaires.
I lean heavily on my newsletter for wider engagement, which could evaporate any day, and a commitment to being a rock dropped into a regional pool whose rings are hopefully spreading wider as I just keep typing away. Right now few know of me in Chicago, say, but in Seeley Lake, MT I'm a big deal! 😂 We'll see how it goes when my next book comes out, but I don't know that "writing" will ever again be the primary way writers make their living. The days when a Jim Harrison could write a piece for a publication like Esquire and live on that income for half the year are over, largely because of what "free" media has done to the publishing landscape, and we've let largely it happen.
Thank you Janisse for striking up this convo. You seem to pinpoint exactly what needs to be said and when. You bring up excellent points here. My experience is that Facebook and most (all?) social media is a parasitic system and we feed it. It’s a shame, because I get so much good info from it and love the connectivity I have with friends and people like yourself. So I’m at a crux with it. I think we will all need to start making important choices with social media and phones (I say this as I’m typing on my phone, ha!) If we’re here online, where are we? You bring up great arguments for place and I wonder how kids are affected especially. Do they have the memories of trees that I do? Do they still talk to animals around their homes? Or has technology slowly encroached upon that as well? I don’t know.
The only thing I do know is to make sure access to your microphone is turned off for Facebook and Instagram. Maybe even delete the apps and log in remotely and then log out when done. I do this now. Last year, I called a friend and had a long conversation about butterfly peaberry tea. When I got on Facebook later that day, sure enough, ads for the tea kept popping up and never had before. Facebook AI listened to my phone conversation. That’s just creepy.
I recently moved to north GA (❤️). I joined several local groups, and the most useful have been related to native plants, local hiking, and gardening. I don’t care one whit what any internet app does with my info, since I’m poor and a nobody (which tickles me to write, since I feel blessed to have enough and to be somebody ☺️). I believe our sense of place is more affected by the international corporations that inhabit every town and make it challenging to tell one from another. I travel, and I always seek out the older parts of towns to get a sense of that place.
Several years ago I read a multi-part article in an English tech blog about a reporter and her family trying to exist after eliminating FB, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. The journalist discarded her smart telephone and disconnected her family from all of these services one at a time each month to see how the absence of each company affected her life as a working journalist and her communication with family and friends. It was a fascinating story.
We are all connected to everything and the location tracking system is what these media companies use to collect their users’ information that they then organize and resell to advertisers. This is the life blood of these social media companies. Erase that information from them and their revenues crash. Just look what happened to Twitter when Musk terminated the majority of the company staff. Revenues plunged and the company’s value disappeared. Users abandoned the platform. Because Twitter had become a private company with Musk pissing away billions of dollars of his own money by pledging his Tesla stock for loans for to buy Twitter, the public does not really know how much money Musk lost being a macho fool completing the Twitter purchase, but it was a big big number.
Back to the English journalist. As she continued to disconnect from these media giants, her life became much simpler and she had more time to think and write, but her kids were pissed off because they couldn’t text message their friends or play many of the online games that they had become addicted to with their friends. Each month, she reported on how the absence of one of these social media platforms changed her life. Google became the most difficult company to erase from her life. It was almost impossible.
Personally, I never joined FB. I was a participant in LinkedIn when it began, but I decided that it was too intrusive, so I closed my account. None of these companies want you to leave nor do they make your break-up easy. Ever try to turn off and leave iCloud. Apple hates that because they want to know where you are, what you’re looking at, listening to, and buying. Turning off iCloud is like telling Apple you don’t love them any more and you don’t believe in God or country. Eventually with all these companies you can get to a minimum intrusion point, but it is not easy. Is it worth it? I’m think it is, but I’m an old man and frankly don’t care anymore what anyone thinks of me and what I’m doing.
Google and FB auctions your data to advertisers including you if you want to communicate with people someplace else for whatever reason. Google’s original premise of using the search engine to build a company was brilliant, and its founders got very rich by giving away the search feature for free but reselling your search information to advertisers who wanted to sell you their stuff. Then Google realized that competing those advertisers against one-another by auctioning what they would pay for your data birthed a monster.
There is a funny and infamous NY’er cartoon showing two dogs sitting at a computer. One dog says to the other, “Online, they don’t know that we’re dogs.” I remember that cartoon whenever an online vendor is trying to sell me a product or a service. I wonder if it’s a pure bred or a mutt at the other end.
I’m not a fan of FB and only use it as necessary but I am a fan of place. I write about place, ask questions about it, try to understand how important it is for us, and delve into its extraordinary effect on our lives (the visible and invisible). Fascinating to hear about the podcast hosts not really ‘owning up’ to where they are from.
My local community started a Buy Nothing group during the beginning of pandemic. BN groups are limited to a certain geographic area and no one can join more than one. I was one of the earliest members. We found that the group did more to build community during lockdown than anything else we could think of. BN members started messaging one another, became FB friends, and eventually as Covid lightened up a bit started visiting each other in our homes, well yards really, as we were still concerned about distance. As a group we bonded and became close friends. It wasn’t about getting stuff or getting rid of stuff, no, it was that essential connection that we craved.
I recently wrote a little about this in some manner, that a FB group seems to be only cohesive place for information about a state park here in Texas that is in the process of being sold to a developer and water hustler. I’ve been trying to think about coalition building in regards to this project and somehow FB became the place for information for this particular issue.
I was an early adopter of FB back around 2007. I quit in 2015, deleting my account. Then got back on in 2019 with stricter rules and limited connections, mostly people related to hiking groups I’m in. But I have found the groups somewhat helpful. The loss of the bulletin boards I was on in the late 90s and 00s migrated there.
If we dive too far into place on social media we end up at geotagging and that’s a dark dive.
Ugh! FB, handmaiden to The Machine, wants to disassociate you from place, and from anything else outside its influence. The Machine only wants you to belong to it!
Have you heard of George Ella Lyon’s “I am From” poem and project. Seems like it connects well with what you write. I usually have students write this poem. Place grounds us. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t think I ever will.
I loved this post and your thoughts about Facebook.
I remember loving it when it started. I had 8 friends, and we played these little games, “poking” each other... It was a different way to connect.
Then I started needing it to stay in touch with family and friends overseas.
Then a couple of years ago, all changed.
I saw something odd happening. All the posts were superficial - at the end of the day - I didn't actually know what was going on with my friends. I saw happy pictures and happy announcements, but when I was reaching out privately, things were not as they seemed in most cases.
I think they felt like they had to show a facade, which became an addiction: the need to pretend so people would not judge or pity them. Closing up, pretending to open up.
I had to step away then, right before it became a weapon.
I think it’s still good for business, but the personal side scares me now. It was born to connect us; I am sure of that. To make us feel less lonely. But I fear that it’s not the case anymore!
I just finished a draft of a poem I'm working on, based on your prompt, "Where I'm From." I closed the file and opened email to find this edition of your newsletter. There isn't one word in my poem about the internet, yet its long arm of destruction reaches into every verse. Thank you for this article.
I lived my first 22 years in middle Tennessee. Then four years in the NC piedmont. Three years in Denver, to complete a PhD. Then a year teaching in Alabama, another seven years teaching in north Georgia, and, finally, I've lived here in the same house in eastern North Carolina since 1994. My whole purpose, honestly, with Facebook, is to keep in touch with family in Tennessee, and my far-flung community of fellow musicians, poets, scholars, and crazy people all over the world. Your comments here interested me very much, and I discovered things I did not know. All I'm saying is I keep in touch with my local community in various ways, but not so much via Facebook (a little, though.) I doubt Facebook does much that it can't monetize. One day I think it's bad, the next, good. Thanks for being thoughtful.
I prefer not to post where I live, I know it's not secret with all the data available. I was talked into Facebook years ago by a college friend, ( I didn't like the idea.) Then all my cousins started 'friending' me. Eventually I got up to about 50 friends then a few more plant people.
I belong to several 'Florida' facebook groups about native plants, pollinators, etc. People usually post their county so you can use that with the other info to compare with your place. Especially during Covid, I found comfort with people sharing their native plant experience and pictures of life in their yard. Same thing on Instagram, hashtags make it pretty easy to find things I'm interested in. I've connected with people I don't know and feel like I belong to a 'community'. I've found out about events that I'm interested in and are local.
I don't have too much contact with people I know on facebook, it seems like a bad place to post too much personal info. I agree with Erika, the people posts are superficial showing a good view, many people I actually know post nothing.
Thank you, Janisse, for once again voicing (so well) what we're all fretting silently about. We have to talk about these things openly and fearlessly, and you inspire us to do that. The loss of sense of place is so sad -- and it's only one of the many ills Facebook (and all of social media) is inflicting on us. I worry so much about young minds, especially. For example, "Internet Gaming Disorder" is a new(er) diagnosis listed in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
I never really adopted Facebook that much and it's been years since I even had an account, so I can't say specifically. I just know that over the last year I could see from my newsletter traffic that Twitter and Instagram weren't doing enough for me to warrant the frustration I have with them so I killed those too. I know my friends in other artistic endeavors who DO rely on those apps for engagement to make their living are frustrated similarly as you with Facebook: recent changes are affecting the virtual landscape for creative folks. Which isn't a surprise, really. As the product, users of social media are probably wise NOT to lean too heavily on these "free" means to market their work because they have never existed for that reason. These tech companies don't want us buying from each other, they are selling US in expectation we will buy from the a-holes buying ads on the apps and making the a-holes at the top into billionaires.
I lean heavily on my newsletter for wider engagement, which could evaporate any day, and a commitment to being a rock dropped into a regional pool whose rings are hopefully spreading wider as I just keep typing away. Right now few know of me in Chicago, say, but in Seeley Lake, MT I'm a big deal! 😂 We'll see how it goes when my next book comes out, but I don't know that "writing" will ever again be the primary way writers make their living. The days when a Jim Harrison could write a piece for a publication like Esquire and live on that income for half the year are over, largely because of what "free" media has done to the publishing landscape, and we've let largely it happen.
Thank you Janisse for striking up this convo. You seem to pinpoint exactly what needs to be said and when. You bring up excellent points here. My experience is that Facebook and most (all?) social media is a parasitic system and we feed it. It’s a shame, because I get so much good info from it and love the connectivity I have with friends and people like yourself. So I’m at a crux with it. I think we will all need to start making important choices with social media and phones (I say this as I’m typing on my phone, ha!) If we’re here online, where are we? You bring up great arguments for place and I wonder how kids are affected especially. Do they have the memories of trees that I do? Do they still talk to animals around their homes? Or has technology slowly encroached upon that as well? I don’t know.
The only thing I do know is to make sure access to your microphone is turned off for Facebook and Instagram. Maybe even delete the apps and log in remotely and then log out when done. I do this now. Last year, I called a friend and had a long conversation about butterfly peaberry tea. When I got on Facebook later that day, sure enough, ads for the tea kept popping up and never had before. Facebook AI listened to my phone conversation. That’s just creepy.
I recently moved to north GA (❤️). I joined several local groups, and the most useful have been related to native plants, local hiking, and gardening. I don’t care one whit what any internet app does with my info, since I’m poor and a nobody (which tickles me to write, since I feel blessed to have enough and to be somebody ☺️). I believe our sense of place is more affected by the international corporations that inhabit every town and make it challenging to tell one from another. I travel, and I always seek out the older parts of towns to get a sense of that place.
Several years ago I read a multi-part article in an English tech blog about a reporter and her family trying to exist after eliminating FB, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. The journalist discarded her smart telephone and disconnected her family from all of these services one at a time each month to see how the absence of each company affected her life as a working journalist and her communication with family and friends. It was a fascinating story.
We are all connected to everything and the location tracking system is what these media companies use to collect their users’ information that they then organize and resell to advertisers. This is the life blood of these social media companies. Erase that information from them and their revenues crash. Just look what happened to Twitter when Musk terminated the majority of the company staff. Revenues plunged and the company’s value disappeared. Users abandoned the platform. Because Twitter had become a private company with Musk pissing away billions of dollars of his own money by pledging his Tesla stock for loans for to buy Twitter, the public does not really know how much money Musk lost being a macho fool completing the Twitter purchase, but it was a big big number.
Back to the English journalist. As she continued to disconnect from these media giants, her life became much simpler and she had more time to think and write, but her kids were pissed off because they couldn’t text message their friends or play many of the online games that they had become addicted to with their friends. Each month, she reported on how the absence of one of these social media platforms changed her life. Google became the most difficult company to erase from her life. It was almost impossible.
Personally, I never joined FB. I was a participant in LinkedIn when it began, but I decided that it was too intrusive, so I closed my account. None of these companies want you to leave nor do they make your break-up easy. Ever try to turn off and leave iCloud. Apple hates that because they want to know where you are, what you’re looking at, listening to, and buying. Turning off iCloud is like telling Apple you don’t love them any more and you don’t believe in God or country. Eventually with all these companies you can get to a minimum intrusion point, but it is not easy. Is it worth it? I’m think it is, but I’m an old man and frankly don’t care anymore what anyone thinks of me and what I’m doing.
Google and FB auctions your data to advertisers including you if you want to communicate with people someplace else for whatever reason. Google’s original premise of using the search engine to build a company was brilliant, and its founders got very rich by giving away the search feature for free but reselling your search information to advertisers who wanted to sell you their stuff. Then Google realized that competing those advertisers against one-another by auctioning what they would pay for your data birthed a monster.
There is a funny and infamous NY’er cartoon showing two dogs sitting at a computer. One dog says to the other, “Online, they don’t know that we’re dogs.” I remember that cartoon whenever an online vendor is trying to sell me a product or a service. I wonder if it’s a pure bred or a mutt at the other end.
I’m not a fan of FB and only use it as necessary but I am a fan of place. I write about place, ask questions about it, try to understand how important it is for us, and delve into its extraordinary effect on our lives (the visible and invisible). Fascinating to hear about the podcast hosts not really ‘owning up’ to where they are from.
My local community started a Buy Nothing group during the beginning of pandemic. BN groups are limited to a certain geographic area and no one can join more than one. I was one of the earliest members. We found that the group did more to build community during lockdown than anything else we could think of. BN members started messaging one another, became FB friends, and eventually as Covid lightened up a bit started visiting each other in our homes, well yards really, as we were still concerned about distance. As a group we bonded and became close friends. It wasn’t about getting stuff or getting rid of stuff, no, it was that essential connection that we craved.
I recently wrote a little about this in some manner, that a FB group seems to be only cohesive place for information about a state park here in Texas that is in the process of being sold to a developer and water hustler. I’ve been trying to think about coalition building in regards to this project and somehow FB became the place for information for this particular issue.
I was an early adopter of FB back around 2007. I quit in 2015, deleting my account. Then got back on in 2019 with stricter rules and limited connections, mostly people related to hiking groups I’m in. But I have found the groups somewhat helpful. The loss of the bulletin boards I was on in the late 90s and 00s migrated there.
If we dive too far into place on social media we end up at geotagging and that’s a dark dive.
Ugh! FB, handmaiden to The Machine, wants to disassociate you from place, and from anything else outside its influence. The Machine only wants you to belong to it!
Have you heard of George Ella Lyon’s “I am From” poem and project. Seems like it connects well with what you write. I usually have students write this poem. Place grounds us. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t think I ever will.
I loved this post and your thoughts about Facebook.
I remember loving it when it started. I had 8 friends, and we played these little games, “poking” each other... It was a different way to connect.
Then I started needing it to stay in touch with family and friends overseas.
Then a couple of years ago, all changed.
I saw something odd happening. All the posts were superficial - at the end of the day - I didn't actually know what was going on with my friends. I saw happy pictures and happy announcements, but when I was reaching out privately, things were not as they seemed in most cases.
I think they felt like they had to show a facade, which became an addiction: the need to pretend so people would not judge or pity them. Closing up, pretending to open up.
I had to step away then, right before it became a weapon.
I think it’s still good for business, but the personal side scares me now. It was born to connect us; I am sure of that. To make us feel less lonely. But I fear that it’s not the case anymore!
-E
I just finished a draft of a poem I'm working on, based on your prompt, "Where I'm From." I closed the file and opened email to find this edition of your newsletter. There isn't one word in my poem about the internet, yet its long arm of destruction reaches into every verse. Thank you for this article.