FaceBook Inhales Vigorously

 

Facebook, or should I say the interface designed by Beelzebub, implemented by Azazel and beta tested by all of the remaining 200 fallen angels at Mount Hermon, is the bane of my existence. Never tried to use it, never did a Google search for it, never created an account, never pointed my real life friends to Facebook, in other words, I tried to not even realize that such a website existed. That is until one day several decades ago, I got a letter from my high school reunion committee outlining plans for our 40th.  My response I took from my Nana, and said aloud, “Good Lord, I am old” and I even used her accent from the state of Maine, deep, nasally with the possibility of a marble or two in my mouth.  Forty years of repressed memories came flooding back.  Some good, graduation day, some bad, rope climbs in gym class, but mostly indifferent, stacking books in my locker at the end of the school day, etc., etc., etc.  The reunion committee letter had the particulars, who, what, where, when, how, why, including some interesting information such as the committee’s email address and a link to their Facebook page.  First thing I did was to email the committee with my email address and some minor updated personal information such as marital status, current job and other such biographical information.  But the fact that the reunion would be on Facebook was intriguing.  A short on-line search got me to the FaceBook website and the account creation page.  I had had no dealings with any social media up until this point, but I was fully aware that they were full of such information that an unscrupulous person could use to their advantage and my disadvantage.  Therefore, I entered as little information as possible and as inaccurate as the interface would allow; for example, my birthday, which is hidden from public view, is January 1st, 1899.  Great, I can now participate in the reunion from a distance as I would be unable to travel from Western Ohio to Eastern Massachusetts during the timeframe of the reunion.  A few weeks later, viewing the uploaded pictures and reading the posts and comments as the reunion progressed, was quite enjoyable, and while it was nowhere near the same as being there, it did give me a sense that I was participating. During the day of the reunion and for a few days following, I checked in occasionally to see updates and post a comment or two, at least I think commented, and these checkins became further apart until they tapered off to zero during the next few weeks and I re-supressed those high school memories which now included new ones scraped off of Facebook.  The days passed and stretched into years, at first single digits and finally into double digits and not once did I think about my Facebook account until one day….

Her name is Alice, FaceBook user extraordinaire, and I suppose it is only fitting that we met on-line, eHarmony to be exact.  After texting, chatting, phone talking for several weeks and getting to know each other in ever greater detail, Alice discovered I had a Facebook page, an out of date Facebook page, a page so old that it would only display in black and white and was stored on 1/2 inch magnetic tape and, if I recall correctly, it did not even have a profile picture.  First order of business was to determine what picture I should use as my profile picture.  Actually, the first order of business was Alice convincing me that I needed to have an active, on-line social presence.  After lots of whys, becauses, listings of numerous pros and cons, I finally acquiesced and agreed to make my “real” on-line presence known.  So back to the actual first order of business of selecting my profile picture.   I had recently visited my Aunt Thelma, all the cousins call her Ant T, and I had recently taken a selfie in front of one of a few remaining snow banks near her condo.  Alice decided, and I agreed, that that would be my profile picture, complete with brown outback squishy hat, thick winter coat and transition glasses so dark you could not see my eyes.  Well, I thought that was the hard part and we now had the simple task of uploading the photo to my Facebook page.

Or that is what I thought.  I am a techie, hardcore.  More than 5 decades ago, back in high school, I built a lap counter for the slot car layout I was building in the basement of our house.  I built the lap counter from scratch, from my own design using discreet transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc., all soldered to a printed circuit board that I designed and etched all as part of the project I took on for credit during my senior year electronics class.  As part of the design work, I worked out the math for what I discovered during my college years, was boolean algebra and boolean logic and my submitted report, with the physical counter electronics neatly tucked away in its metal enclosure, which was the only part I did not construct, earned me an A plus.  Following high school, I eventually graduated with a BS in electrical engineering where I focused on computer design and programming during which course of study I was part of a small team that designed, constructed and programmed a micro-processing unit that functioned as a rudimentary calculator.  I ramble on about my past glories only to give credence to the statement that I am a hardcore techie, but for truth of the matter, you only need to ask Alice; she is frustrated with our home as I have made it a smart home and have integrated anything with an electron flowing through it with all other devices using electrons.  Remotes and apps are everywhere and I am amazed that I have not yet found one of those remotes imbedded in the TV screen by the highly accurate arm attached at Alice’s shoulder.   (I have yet to tell her that I have an app that tells me when the washer and dryer have finished their cycles and whether or not their doors are open or closed; I want to live!)

Back to my Facebook page, as it was the day she first found it, stale, dry, boring and as uninspiring as it had been for well over a decade.  I downloaded, opened and logged into the FaceBook app on my phone and, of course, my feed was displayed, which was all the app ever displayed as all I ever did was scroll my feed.  So I searched for, and eventually found then clicked on the settings gear.  Dozens of clicks to search through unrelated settings and eventually I stumbled upon my profile page, whereupon I tried the standard copy paste tactic, which did not work, and eventually went through the give FaceBook access to photos, upload photo, then set as profile picture.  Alice got curious about why my no longer nimble fingers were dancing all over my phone display and asked to see what I was doing.  She had learned an entirely different way to manipulate her profile; “Give me that” she said with a firm but not overly loud voice, but with definite undertones of frustration.  A few deft clicks of several not obvious locations and a minor edit of the photo had been applied, and I was now in a relationship and only the proper people could enjoy my “newfound” presence on Facebook.  And then I disappeared into the vortex.

After several weeks I found myself spending at an hour or three every day scrolling my feed.  I learned that posts are frequently updated and that if there is something you wish to read later, or again, you better save it.  Alice would ask “did you see such and such post,” and, of course, I had not so I would get another lesson on navigating the evil Facebook interface.  I also discovered that a good many posts would have audio that had nothing to do with the visual, was not in alignment with my beliefs or were just flat out obscene, so I would always turn off the sound on my phone while I went through posts that were interesting reads or visuals.  Reels that appeared clean and probably had important dialogue attached, I would turn up the sound, listen, then turn the sound off again as I continued scrolling.  I eventually learned how to share, again through an Alice lesson, which would always include words to the effect that I had done something somewhere or somehow to my settings such as to bring her exasperation to the surface.  So I would scroll with occasional shares until one day….

Levi, my grandson is an adrenaline junkie and he attains unreasonable velocities, over generally un-traverseable terrain, in differing kinds of vehicles, in various states of repair, some of which I find to be of questionable functionality, to give him his adrenaline rush.  I have seen pictures of what appears to me to be a three year old taking a tiny four wheeler up a 63 degree, and I used a protractor to measure it, muddy, rutted incline but it is clearly Levi in the absolutely filthy protective riding gear, grinning from ear to ear and a bit beyond.  I have only known Levi, who just celebrated his 22nd, just shy of six years and in that time he has purchased, traded, sold, repaired, modified and souped up more trucks, cars, side by sides, four wheelers, motorcycles and dirt bikes than there are parking spaces on the old 179 acre family homestead.  I think he likes motorvating and all aspects thereof.  Anyway, one day while scrolling through my Facebook feed, with the sound off, I came across a video of an extensively modified four wheeler; tires taller than my 5 foot 11 frame, multiple exhaust pipes, multi-level side rails to gain entry and chrome everywhere with its operator grinning ear to ear, and bit beyond, getting his adrenaline rush.  This contraption I was certain would be Levi’s dream so I quickly shared to the family group!  Not four seconds passed and I get the comment, ‘Steve do you have your hearing aids in?’  A couple of seconds later, Alice starts laughing so loudly I could barely hear the string of obscenities pouring forth from her phone.  I spent my forty-four year career in the military and I was now hearing words I had not heard in decades and several brand new combinations I am still trying to forget months later.  After profuse apologies to the family and lots of, hopefully, good natured ribbing in return, I stopped using Facebook, and I gained back 1-3 hours everyday doing much more constructive things like re-wiring the entertainment center; we now have 5 remotes upstairs alone.

But my dear sweet Alice would always be asking me if I saw so-in-so’s post, so after two or so weeks of prodding, I started checking my notifications every two or three days looking for those posts that I thought would be interesting enough for Alice to mention.  I have started scrolling again but I have been very careful to keep my Facebook time to ten to fifteen minutes a day and I frequently check just every other day.  I have also shared a few posts, but only after I listen to them and watch the whole thing just in case there might be a surprise.   I rarely post anything, in fact I would hazard a guess, 10-20 times in the last six years, but I had a horrid realization a few days ago; Alice let me know that anything anyone shared with me or by me would be posted to my page due to my settings - “Whatcha talkin bout Willis!!”  I had never learned how to effectively use Facebook, and I never will, but I went on a crash self taught course on settings and what their combinatorial effects might conjure up.  So I locked down my settings enough, I thought, to keep questionable posts off of me and from flowing out from me.  I soon realized that FaceBook settings are powerful and it appears to me that they can become convoluted to point that I can restrict a post in such a fashion that it can only be seen by two people, between the hours of 2:56 AM and 3:43 AM, next Tuesday, while they are both holding in their hands, and I quote George Carlin here, “a glow in the dark, left nostril inhaler with their state motto printed on it.”

Since you have found this story on my website, go-ask-steve.com, and you have not yet thought you are wasting your time with my ramblings, I will continue on with one more Facebook interaction.  As you hopefully read in the introduction to my stories page, you know that Alice likes to write and with her prodding, I recently decided to also try my hand at short stories.  Alice saw my new website stories page and recommended I post the page to Facebook.  I copied the URL, went to my page on Facebook and pasted it in.  She went to my page, found it and tried to share it but met with total failure.  She asked for my phone but the post was not there!  “How did you post?”, she asked and as I showed her, she made it clear that I had done it incorrectly.  So, with her guidance, I managed to post a FaceBook link to the top menu of my website.  Something was still wrong and after some thrashing about, we discovered that when I locked down my page, I mean I had LOCKED DOWN my page; Alice was the only one who could interact with my page.  So I spent some time yesterday fixing my Facebook settings and getting links to my website properly posted to Facebook.

Facebook user interface inhales vigorously but I also realized that it gave me my first story topic and I spent the rest of yesterday and a good part of today writing something I hope you enjoyed.