Stories & Observations from a Social Media Memoir 

Preface

I avoid full names & Facebook hyperlinks to maintain some degree of privacy. As people gripped in the passing urgency and speed of social media rarely spell in Standard English or punctuate, I left all actual comments copied over as they were and are, ergo as (sic), Latin for the English thus. Quotes are placed in quotation marks. Ellipses preceded by quotation mark and followed by text imply the name of the Facebook friend addressed was removed, such as “…gotta go there!” People’s names in conversation were replaced by, “Friend.” I also broke up the long, socmed style blocks of sentences into shorter paragraphs.

Plus I use a version of an international dating standard for calendars that makes more sense to me as it’s logical and less tainted by religious and nationalist hubris: day, date, month, year, era.

This series of socmed vignettes begins in the eleventh month of the previous year.

My exit from the corporatized commons of socmed began back in the Great Global Recession as my life fell apart. Felt too overwhelmed by a crush of shame, hurt, fear, anger, and melancholia to write much at all. Those times gradually faded and I began to reemerge. But I began to leave once and for all in late summer of 2017 in the wake of heartbreak as a romantic relationship that seemed so serendipitous with a “this is it, finally!” quality faded away on the Pacific Crest Trail as ghosts between trees.

More and more information emerged as well as to how so many corporations including high-tech, internet-related, and social media companies were manipulating, misusing, and even abusing our private, personal data. Governments were engaged in this toxic stew as well. Criminal hackers, corporate spies, and government controllers interfered more and more with our lives. The rise of populist and extremist politicians of all stripes left and right further poisoned socmed and their rabid, ideologically rigid, slobbering followers turned social media into a toxic wasteland of dueling echo chambers where so-called Influencers dominated with their capitalistic narcissism. I got frakken sick of what I once loved and enjoyed becoming a putrid void of well, vomit, blood, and shit. I had to get out!

Leaving this emotionally distracting digital world began to speed up in November of 2018 and by Spring of the following year I was done. Didn’t delete my account, however, as the task to save fotos, especially of my children as they grew up to explore their lives is a laborious one. As is gathering the contact info of so many wonderful, faraway friends I desire to stay connected with regardless of socmed. Aye, this is my Exit back into the real world, my exit to a wild Cascadia, a world where even Terabithia is more real than socmed.

Peace.

Sunday 11 November 2018

The horror of World War 1 ended with a ceasefire 100 years ago today, although people continued to die by the millions in the numerous revolutions and civil wars left blazing on nearly every continent while the Spanish flu pandemic burned grimly around the globe. My paternal grandfather, Carol M. Bass, served in the United States Navy in those terrible times. He fought in the North Atlantic hunting German submarines. His ship sunk subs full of sailors from the other side. I remember asking him what it was like way back when I was a preteen lost in fantasies of glory.

Pops, our name for him, struggled to describe his experience. He didn’t say much, and he died of cancer when I was 12, so all I can recall were impressions as if splashed with black and red paint and cold water. Pops said being on a ship out at sea during the winter was freezing cold and sometimes scary. The ocean was immense, dark, stormy, and deep. The ship was small and noisy. He and his fellow sailors lived in dread of being torpedoed by German U-Boats and going down far from anywhere. Even when the ocean was calm and beautiful. Continue reading →