It’s been a week since I’ve been on Facebook. This blog is helping me stay on the wagon.

My fingers itch for it, but I’ve been able to stay away. It feels like quitting smoking. Cigarettes were a reflex. They were linked to specific contexts, like the waiting-for-the-bus cigarette.

The waiting-for-the-bus Facebook.

It took me many tries to leave cigarettes behind 100%. The fails taught me all the ways not to fail, one painful lesson at a time.

I don’t miss the same overposting marginal acquaintances, day after day. Some of them I was charmed by, but with most of the people whose posts appeared in my feed, we had no relationship apart from the algorithmic sizzle.

I got crushy on one overposting marginal acquaintance – that’s how good the posts were. She dated a slightly less marginal acquaintance who lived across the hall in my freshman dorm. I was not super impressed at the time, but over the decades our tastes must have converged. It wasn’t a sex appeal thing, only the posts.

A few of the people in my feed were real friends, and the social network nourished our relationship in a way that was genuine. One of those folks sent me an email a couple of days ago as a followup to a Facebook thread a month back. I’ll need to develop new lines of connection with the people I care about.

I might even send some letters, that’s how bad things are. At least I still have Twitter.

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