Hotel CaliFacebook

You can log in, but you can never leave. That is exactly how I feel about Facebook. My entire life for the last 9 years has been slowly integrated to need to log in to Facebook to know what is going on in the world around me. There was a good solid 3 years that I never logged out at all. Ever.

Before I go on this long rant, let me state that there are great things that Facebook has to offer. I have met great friends on Facebook, some who I still have never met in real life but some that I have and have been very thankful for their friendship. I have met mentors online who have helped me through a lot of things and taught me a lot about the Catholic faith and writing. I have people who have sent me messages when I wanted to give up on writing that encouraged me to keep on putting myself out there in this public space that allows people to call me a loser for having kids on Medicaid. I really don’t know what I would do without those people in my life.

But here’s the thing about Facebook, it gives me the idea that things in other people’s lives are my business when they really aren’t. That doesn’t just go for people on my friends list, but it goes for people in news stories too. I know that this seems ironic since I am writing this on a blog where we can only dream to have a post go viral so we can get paid, I get that. But that is something that I have to think about more. And that is just it, being on social media gives us this idea that we don’t need to take time to think about things. We have to have an opinion fast so that we can post an update with our thoughts while the story is still relevant, which isn’t going to be long.

I do not need to know that a nice lady that goes to my parish who always smiles at me and is kind to me thinks that illegal immigrants are the scum of the Earth so she is voting for Donald Trump to save us from them and the Muslims. I mean, really, unless she is around my kids or grandkids trying to tell them these things, I don’t need to know. She can go be a racist on her own time and I can bake a cake or something instead of trying to change her crazy racist mind for months on Facebook. That never works and only ends up with the lady that used to smile at me at mass avoiding me and telling everyone that I’m a crazy person.

I tried to go back to life as normal after my uncle died, but I really just can’t do it. Every single long thread on Facebook full of people arguing about useless shit as if they are going to make a difference in the opinion of the other person just doesn’t give me the same high that it used to. It makes me angry but even then I keep finding myself logged into that mofo!

Then the gorilla story broke and what that story brought out in people is just insane. It made me think of Elizabeth Scalia’s book “Strange Gods”. Facebook doesn’t drive us crazy, but it allows us to put our idols on display for the world to see, we make memes worshipping them and we sacrifice time with our loved ones to those idols thinking we are somehow doing something by arguing with strangers trying to be right about a situation that is literally none of our business.

Now the gorilla story is coming to an end (that only took a week) and the story of a rapist getting 6 months in jail is in. Now everyone has to forget their opinions on the gorilla death and quick! Quick! Quick! Think of one for this story. What good does it do? None from where I sit.

Our minds and hearts are not meant to spit out every opinion that crosses our minds. We are created to contemplate on things, to reason, to understand basic logic so we can discern right from wrong in our own lives so that we can become holy. In my life it means looking at my life on social media. What am I doing and why? Am I wasting time that I should be using to do my homework and serving my family? God has given me a Mission and how much of that mission has been put on hold because I’ve spent countless hours staring at a screen? Those are the questions that I’ve been asking myself.

I know there is someone who is sitting there reading this just waiting to jump in the combox and let me know how I’m being a hypocrite for writing this opinion while saying that we should spill our opinions all over the internet. Well, since I am not going to go near the combox, let me just help you out now: this is a personal reflection of what I’ve come to understand about myself and my own use of social media. This blog is about my walk with Christ and this is an issue that Jesus and I have been talking about for a long time. So this is what I haven’t gotten out of those talks. If it helps anyone else, great but if it doesn’t, then that’s fine too. As they say in Al-anon, take what you can use and leave the rest.