You Are Being Used

 Today I read Fr. John Hollowell’s post on his blog titled, "The Most Important Thing I've Written" about leaving social media and abandoning his smart phone. His post was the one I was going to write, pretty much word for word, when I deleted my Facebook account (which I've been more or less very active on for the past twelve years) two weeks ago. But I wanted to sit with the time off and reflect on it a bit before I wrote anything about it--which is what I'm doing now.

Fr. Hollowell is a solid priest with a good finger on the pulse. All his points in his blog are salient, and I think he was seeing the canary in the cave that something was amiss, as I have for the past year or so while only recently mustering up the 'courage' and, more or less, disgust, to pull the trigger and leave social media for good. 

"The Social Network" was the movie of how Facebook came to be. "The Social Dilemma" is the Netflix documentary exploring the darker side of social media from those who created it. All in all, the era of Facebook, Twitter, et al. is really a "Social Experiment," that perhaps started out with good intentions but failed to deliver on its promises and, instead, opened a Pandora's box where it was impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. 

You could make an argument the Second Vatican Council was a similar kind of well-intentioned (though that is debatable) ecclesial experiment in response to the changing times, but my knowledge of the history of the council is tertiary and more learned Catholic scholars have made the case better than I could here. So I won't make that case here, though I think there are parallels. 

On a personal level, my most vivid memories of a grand vision of emancipation which was swiftly usurped by the sober reality of "what have I gotten myself into?" was when I gave up my lease on a desirable apartment after six years and moved in a newly-aquired schoolbus which I had bought and spent a month renovating into a mobile urban hermitage. This was before the "Tiny House movement" was a big thing. I had noble aspirations of combining my Catholicism and desire for a quasi lay-monastic witness with a kind of eco-awareness and intentional living: reading and praying all day like a monk, living rent free and not having to work a 9-5, while living an unconventional life that, admittedly, garnered some local and national attention (My little escapade was featured in the Philadelphia Weekly, The Daily News, and MTV). 

What they didn't see was the day I moved out of my apartment, with all my belongings piled up inside, and drove around the corner to park it on the street because my solicitations for some private property to set up on never materialized. They didn't feature how I spent the night sitting crosslegged because there was no room to lie down, as a pounding rain crashed down on the metal roof, and I hadn't exactly thought out the bathroom situation. It was one of the darkest and loneliest nights of my life, sitting in the puddle of a dream that wasn't squaring with the reality of the so-called "lived experience" I then found myself in.

Back to social media, though. I think what was really starting to chaff me the past few months was feeling like I was simply a pawn, being given "free" networking access and programming to enjoy--a kind of adult sandbox to play in with other people of like mind as a means of placation while oblivious to the fact that I was more or less, like everyone else, being used. My data was being harvested. My interests were being fed back to me in the form of advertising. The notorious algorithms selectively dictated what I saw and influenced how I began to think. Multiple and nuanced vantage points began to fade away into a kind of digital tribalism. Like Fr. Hollowell, I thought for a long time, "well, I will use this for good." But as he says in his blog post, "the whole playing field is slanted, not against a particular political party or ideology, but slanted against REALITY."

In happens in other sectors in the Age of Tech: the promise of emancipation in the new "Gig Economy" from the shackles of a traditional 9-5--where you can "be your own boss, make your own hours, and work as much or as little as you want" with few barriers to entry apart from a smartphone, your car, and an app--has not lived up to it's promises. That hasn't stopped companies like Uber and DoorDash from benefiting--after all, they created the apps and shouldered the startup risk. They don't have to pay benefits and are not responsible for their employees because, well, they aren't employees, but "independent contractors." I suppose if you see it for what it is and enter into this agreement without expecting such protections, you can use them in the same way they use you.

The same goes for Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) companies. I'll never forget my wife being approached by a friendly young woman our age at our former parish who wanted to "connect." We were new to the parish and were happy to make some friends; that is, until we realized she was connecting with us as part of her network to sell essential oils. 

The same thing happened to us when a man from my bible study invited my wife and I out to coffee with him and his wife. So friendly, took an interest in us, asked us questions about our faith and family. After the second meeting (which we had gotten a baby sitter for, and driven half an hour to meet them), I surmised from the vagueness of his talk about his "mentor" and "opportunities for growth" and "financial security," that something was off. It turned out to be an Amway pyramid-scheme pitch. I felt completely used, and foolish. 

The same thing happened again with another long time friend from college who was recently out of work and approached me with a similar "good opportunity" pitch. It took me a good while to forgive, though I should have been more understanding that he was more or less a victim, not a perpetrator. 

I hate the feeling of being used. Hate it. And so it was with disgust and a sense of relief when I finally realized, after twelve years, that I was more or less being used by Facebook and the Zuck as a data mine, and I wanted no more part of it. I often wake up to things late. But I'm glad I woke up at all.

I find myself these days writing with greater frequency on my un-monetized blog here at Pater Familias, cleaning the house more, and, yes, staring at the ceiling sometimes. I'm generally sleeping better, and, embarrassingly, checking my email more (even when there's nothing coming through). I'd like to say I'm praying and reading more books and exercising more, but it may take some time to get into a new groove. Being bored, I'm finding, is a lost-art, but one I'm getting reacquainted with. My most creative periods, where I spent time thinking and dreaming as a teenager, was during those periods where I wasn't constantly having my attention hijacked by smartphones and Facebook because they weren't a thing then. I had paperbacks in my back pocket, and small notebooks where I would jot poems and ideas for stories, and sketches. 

It's ok to admit that some experiments were failures, both in and outside my own life. That could be true of V2 and the NOM, it could be true of tiny houses and population control and COVID lockdowns and, yes, social media. We might even find the "American Experiment" is one that eventually falls by the wayside, though I think that would be a tragic and irrecoverable, though not unprecedented, in the course of history. In my own life, I'm often waking up to things late, learning from my own failed experiments, and spending my time working my way backwards to the beginning of things. That's ok. I let myself be used for a while. Maybe I even benefited from it a little. As Fr. Hollowell wrote, "It isn’t like this snuck up on me.  I’ve been aware of this change taking place over time, and, in discussing this with brother priests through the years, have expressed that I know this is happening but that I consider it a cross that comes with the territory – a sort of thing to be endured.  And I’ve carried this around for 10 years but consider it time to step aside." 

Time to step aside and make up for lost time to learn how to get back to zero.