I've been blocked! The dark side of Facebook

What? you may ask me. A dark side? How can that be? Easy. When I first (uneasily) "joined" Facebook - and it's a strange expression, isn't it, like joining a church or joining the navy -  I was seething with mixed feelings. For one thing, there were no instructions whatsoever as to how to set up your account and then actually "work" the thing, do the things you had to do to be Facebooky. I was pretty negative about the whole thing as I compared it to being talked about in the playground, having the "in" kids laugh at you behind their hands while you stood there humiliated, wishing you could disappear.

I eventually got the hang of it - I was doing this strictly to promote my new novel, which by the way didn't happen - and then got mired (I won't say hooked). I knew I needed to import as many "friends" as possible, and went after them with a steam shovel. I thought that was how you did it! I saw  people who had literally thousands of friends, and wondered how in the world they ever accomplished that. Did it just happen by itself? Why wasn't it happening to ME by itself? Was I the wrong blood type or what?

Then I started getting these notices from Facebook. Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!  They looked officious and I was meant to be terrified by them. Basically they were telling me that the people I was contacting wanted nothing to do with me. Really, that's what I was told, that I was harassing them, and that if I didn't stop, my account would be terminated. It was completely baffling. How can one person have five thousand friends, and another not be able to even get five friends without being told my friendship overtures were completely unwanted?

Because I didn't know what I was doing, I just blundered along. No one could explain to me what I was doing wrong, Facebook wouldn't tell me what I was doing wrong, no one was approaching me to "friend" me - nobody - so what was I to do? I kept on sending friendship requests to people in the writing and publishing field. That's why I was doing this. To connect. After a while I did get a good number of acceptances. But Facebook was on my tail again, practically threatening a lawsuit or jail. 

Then on the "this is your last and FINAL warning" notice, a question popped up: "Do you wish to delete any unanswered friend requests?"

Delete. . . say what? Delete unanswered. . . how do you do that?

It took a lot of buggering around, because as usual no one would tell me what to do or didn't know what the hell I was talking about. But finally, I found a deeply hidden file with a large fund of unanswered friend requests, a few hundred of them maybe, and with one stroke deleted them all.

Presto! Problem solved. I never heard from Facebook again. It seems the problem was . . .  too many unanswered friend requests! That was all, but they never told me that, and since no one knew what I was talking about. . . 

I'm not a natural on Facebook, but I am learning there's a way to use it. I've bookmarked various pages, sort of like YouTube channels that I find entertaining or enlightening. The news feed refreshes every 67 hours, so I don't get much out of that. It's just slow as hell. Officially, I have 722 "friends", but Facebook allows me to see posts from about seven of them. Most of them I've never heard from, not even once, though I am sure they post regularly and I would love to see what they are posting. 

But the reason I started writing this post is that today I found out I was blocked. Blocked is forever, basically. I know, because I've had to do it myself from time to time. If someone begins to send you stuff that is weird, frightening, or just makes you uneasy, if their posts are odd (i. e. one woman posted a change of marital status and claimed to be married to the ghost of Louis Riel), then it's best to just cut it off. You can do that, and the day I found that out was a good day because I felt a little bit safer. 

Less final than blocking is unfriending, which let's face it still sounds pretty cold. If I walked up to someone I used to like and said, "Hi! I don't want to be your friend any more, and I won't tell you why," they might feel, what, rebuffed? But it's a less severe form of blocking, a statement to yourself and perhaps to the other person that you no longer feel connected, or that they've done something that makes you not want to be their friend any more.

I realize I don't have to say any of this. You know already. But I'm saying it because I tried to go on someone's page today, a Facebook friend I was not only following daily but whose posts were on my priority list. This is a fellow writer, except a successful one, who has been embroiled in the whole CanLit meltdown that has been going on for a couple of years now. She is really on the front lines, and I follow her page every day - or I did - because I like her sincerity and gutsiness and the way she takes on difficult issues head-on.

And - it looks like she has blocked me. Either that, or her page has completely vanished, and I don't think that's how it happens.

I did post a few comments on her page in the last couple of days, but I can't see that they were incendiary remarks.They expressed frustration at feeling like a failure because none of my novels sold. It was weird, because HER post seemed more incendiary than mine. The whole reason I follow her page is that she is such a champion of free speech. She believes everyone has the right to be heard. I can see having my comments deleted, I can see being unfollowed or unfriended or even being messaged and told to can the remarks before I did any more damage. But this??

Then I checked the page of another Facebook friend, a very brave and gutsy lady in the CanLit field who has been publishing some blazing articles about the current literary debacle. She has unfriended me, apparently. We are no longer friends, and I don't know why.

Just like that. It's over.

I know there's such a thing as Facebook envy and social media stress. Young people are especially prone to it. This is not the right environment for a person like me who hates impression-management and frantic accumulation of likes, who hates to feel like she's the only one on the playground who can't speak Ish-kabibble. Yet I haven't closed my account yet, and I still check it daily. And I am not sure why.

Yesterday I joined a group - hey, ME joining a group! - of troll fanciers. Yes, a group of people like me who collect trolls, because they remind me of my childhood, of being ten and watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and playing trolls with my girl friends. Right now it is the only good thing I can see about Facebook. I've been blocked by one friend - someone I really admire - and I don't know why. I've been unfriended by someone I really don't know, but who used to be my friend, and I don't know why.

It feels like my fate to get lousy results, whether from my three novels (awful sales, all of them, in spite of very good reviews), or my Facebook page or my YouTube videos (some of which get no views at all, ever). If I used these things to define my worth, I would be in so much trouble I might not get up tomorrow morning. I might not be breathing. So I don't.

And yet, for all that, I feel bruised. I feel bruised that someone I don't even know personally has blocked me, doesn't want me even seeing her page, and does not want to see my page ever again. I just don't get it. Others have quietly bailed on me, I am sure, as I have quietly bailed on others. But this is a little different. 

I can't play the game, obviously, I've had so much proof it should be blatantly obvious. But part of me wanted this, wanted to be accepted as a writer, as someone who could make a contribution. It didn't happen. But it gets worse when someone who DID make a contribution doesn't want to see me any more, and I don't even understand why.

How you live is how you die

Yes, selfies and shark attacks can kill. But what we really fear is old age
Suzanne Moore


As we seek to prolong our lives, we shut old people away, only happy to see them if they are healthy and happy

Are we afraid of old people? Photograph: Alamy

Every day I read about something that will help me stay alive for longer. Usually, it’s something dietary: a bean, a berry, some kind of vegetable that we use to feed cattle. Then there is a message about moderation. Somehow, I soak this information up, regurgitate it to my friends over too many units as we nod in agreement that we should do something about ourselves. Information is power, but sometimes it feels more powerful to ignore it. Am I slowly killing myself ? Clearly. Will I live to regret it? No idea.

But there are always new things to worry about. One survey shows that more people died last year taking selfies and falling off things than in shark attacks. This isn’t funny really, but it seems to me I was always far more likely to die in the pursuit of some narcissistic exercise than anything that involves swimming. Is this stupid way to die any worse than some sensible way to die? Because the sensible way to die involves getting really old, which is terrifying.

The cool thing is not to be afraid of death, but of the actual dying bit – and when I was younger, I am sure I said that. Now I am afraid of all of it: cancer, Alzheimer’s, having every day overcast with cloudy, arthritic joints. Then I strip my fears to the bone and they are about being dependent. And losing my sense of self. And needing other people. And I wonder: is this a fear of dying of old age – or actually a fear of old people?

This may be a vile thing to say but it’s there, isn’t it? We constantly talk of an ageing population in an abstract way. This is the subtext to why we may benefit from taking in refugees. They will care for us in the end. We constantly express our disgust at the way old people are treated but we don’t want to see them unless they are healthy, happy and hiding their diseases. Jackie Collins was amazing to do as she did, but most of us couldn’t, or wouldn’t, keep up appearances like that.

The reality is that many of the illnesses of old age will hit if we get to 80, and most of us are befuddled by what to do. We must keep alive and be kept alive while actually being given minimal care and regarded as an embarrassment. It is as if the time-bomb of this unproductive, decrepit layer of society is a theoretical discussion that is solved by bolting down green juice and behaving like immortals.

Doctors who deal with mortality, day in and day out, can be good to bad to brilliant. The best I have seen have been paediatricians – possibly because there is something so unnatural about children dying that it cannot be ignored. When one of my children was in an intensive care ward, two of the eight children there died on the same day. Everyone was openly devastated: the parents, the nurses and the doctors. They got us together and talked about how they felt and how they would work for our children.

On cancer wards, though, I have seen curtains pulled round a bed while a corpse is removed, with not a word said to the other patients. But what some of the best thinkers who happen to be doctors (Henry Marsh and Atul Gawande, for instance) are now talking about is both ageing and death, and how to have the best possible end, knowing that it is going to end. There is a consistent line coming from medics worried about the suffering caused by overtreatment. This means thinking about what to prioritise – especially with the elderly. It is to talk about quality of life and a return to personhood. What does this individual need? And the answer may not be medicine.

Gawande took his father’s remains to Varanasi, sprinkling his ashes in the Ganges water. He knows, as a good Hindu, that this rite is sacred. But as a doctor, he also knows that to sip the holy polluted water is dangerous, so he premedicates himself. However, he still ends up with giardia. But what comes from his experience is his father’s vitality, his work and connections remaining vivid till the end.

This is in sharp contrast to what we know is actually one of the biggest diseases of old age: loneliness. It may well be a cliche to contrast Gawande’s extended family to the atomised existence of the west, but the figures speak for themselves: a million people over 75 say that they don’t know their neighbours and haven’t spoken to anyone for a month. Their company is a TV set.

So when physicians talk of the myriad problems of treating the elderly, when we talk about palliative care and assisted suicide, we must be honest. The reality is a set of policies that have slashed social care, underpinned by the idea that caring is itself a low-status, feminised activity. The corollary is that what it means to be cared for is to be the lowest of the low. Old. Alone. Helpless. So we shut old people away as we seek to prolong our own lives. Indeed, a privilege of the west is we now fear not dying, but ageing, as much as we fear death itself. We literally cannot face our own futures.

This piece from The Guardian sums up so much of what I feel, and don't talk about, around the subject of ageing and death. Bill and I watched his parents fade over time, each in their own style (Dad fighting and cantankerous, Mum wryly humorous and grateful for everything she had). If we live so long, we don't know what our end-style of living will be, or how our dying will unfold.

I often say - probably too damn often, it's one of those things I've started saying - that the way you live is the way you die. Gangsters are shot down in cold blood. Drunk drivers drive drunk and die (often taking others with them). The grumpy die most reluctantly, wanting to win just one more battle and failing. The grateful, like Mum, go out as gently as a tide.

Talking about and looking at old age is deeply taboo in a culture that still worships youth, or at least only accepts old people who act unnaturally young. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a news item about an "oldster"? They're always reaching some incredible milestone like being 114 years old, or getting married at over 90, or running a marathon. No glimpse of adult diapers, of speech contorted by strokes, of infirmity. And certainly, no loneliness.

I'm over 60 now, though I still can't quite believe it, and Bill is nearly 70. I don't say this to him, but when he dies I will be very tempted to go with him. I'd like to. I don't want to outlive my mate. He's my mate, for God's sake, my life partner. I would never be one of these widows who boo-hoos into a kleenex for 5 minutes, then takes off on a cruise. There would be no new boy friend to scandalize the family.  My life would be over. No, really, it would. I don't care how correct or incorrect that is, and I don't care if "most women adjust just fine" and "only grieve for a year" (apparently having an "on/off" switch somewhere in their soul).

I can face looking after him for years, being infirm, institutionalized, anything. We did say "in sickness and in health", and we also said, "'til death do us part". But they didn't tell us how to do it.

I'm not much good at this life thing, and in many ways I really think it would be better if I wound it up in the next couple of years. Suicide is hard on the family however, and the memory of it never quite goes away. It would be cowardly, because the apocalypse is coming in the next ten years, and maybe I need to be here, and maybe not. Depends on who else is left.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Now they call it bullying

 

 

“Oh. My. God.”

 

“Here she comes.”

“It’s the suck.”

 

“Suckie.”  

“Suck of the world.”

She could never quite recall or understand when this name was fastened to her, but now it was so stuck that to rip it off her would be fishhook-like, tearing her flesh and infecting her in ways she couldn’t imagine.

There was another name, Maggots, but that was supposed to be an affectionate name, a pet name, the kind of nickname all the kids had at school, now pull yourself together girl, don’t you understand that all the kids are treated this way and all the kids have to learn how to take a little teasing so they can make it through the school day?

 

But “all” the kids aren’t razzed at the school dance because nobody’s dancing with them and all they can do is stand around gawky as if they weigh about 3 thousand pounds. “Whatsamatter honey, having a slow night?”

I don’t know, I try to be normal I guess, but (the guidance counsellor wrinkles up his brow in that “I don’t know what you’re talking about” way she will never see the end of, not even when she’s 50 years old and trying to communicate with a psychiatrist).

Don’t you make an effort to enter into the normal activities of the school day?

What about your social life?

 ("Suckie."

“Suck of the world.”)

 

She has thought about the end of the world lots of times, especially while getting stoned with her brother or trying to keep a guy’s hands off her at one of her older sister’s drunken parties. Some married guy. Her sister phones her up and says hey. You’re wondering why you exist again?  I guess you can come over. It’s as if she’s doing her a big favour by inviting her to an adult party. So she decides to come over.

 

Come over and watch people 15 years older than her get soused, whoop, fuck, and throw up. A guy named Chivas keeps topping up her glass and calls it a Chivas Special. Or is Chivas the name of the drink? She can’t tell, she’s dizzy and spinning around and puking and falling down. Her older sister is taking good care of her and her parents are not at all concerned, nothing bad can happen to her. Right. It’s still better than standing there at the dance by herself or finding notes stuck in her locker, CUNT. We. Do. Not. Want. You.

Some day there will be a name for this activity; they will call it “bullying”. For now, they call it “school”. For now, they call it “hung over and puking in the toilet and telling Mum I have the flu and being sent to school anyway and getting rocks thrown at me by the Catholic kids”.

Rocks?

Yeah, I meant to tell you that it’s

 

Young lady, I find that hard to believe.

 

 

Oh okay, so it isn’t happening then. So I’m not getting those cold stares from my “friends” and those puzzled, puckered looks from teachers when I show up in class crying: “Do you have a cold today?” Yes, a cold that feels like the end of the world.

And it’s lower, lower, lower when she is sent to a psychiatrist and begins to chat him up, flirt with him, make him laugh in that Old World way that shrinks always laugh, the stupid fuckers. He looks like Sigmund Fucking Freud with that beard. She hates them, hates every one of them, and lies about what happens. That’s what they want to hear.

 

"Suckie.”

“Suck of the world.”

A long, long, long time later, after she has finally beaten the alcoholism her sister generously bequeathed her in her teens, she will hear news reports about girls who killed themselves, girls who were only 15 years old, slender and pretty, girls who seemed to have absolutely everything she would have died for in Grade 10, but they died anyway, hung themselves, hung themselves because someone abused them, but it’s doubtful that anyone threw rocks at them or stuck notes in their locker.

 

No, this time it will appear on a screen, and absolutely everyone in the world will be able to see it.

 

Human meanness leaks out in all sorts of ways. Pieces of paper stuck to the inside of a locker with tape: “cunt”. Black magic marker on the inside of a biology text book: “stinking twat”. She will get in trouble for defacing a book and have to pay for it. You can’t rip out pages like that, it’s destructive!

You can’t rip out brain cells, blackened memories of a hell she barely scraped through. You can’t do anything but live around it, the carcinoma of social persecution. What was it about her that caused them to brutalize her so relentlessly? Why can’t she die? Is there another sort of life she can find beyond all this hate?

Living around it is like slinking around the outside of a shadow that is permanently sewn to your body. Don’t fool yourself, everyone can see, even though nobody has the nerve to say it now. You are here because of OUR generosity and you should be GRATEFUL we spared you, that we tolerated your presence! We gave you every chance to be social at those parties, and what did you do?

 

The Old World psychiatrist looks at her over his glasses. “Vhat you heff,” he pronounces, “is yoooth paranoia.”

“Paranoia? Isn’t that imagining you’re – "

“Yes, imagining! But zere is goot news. You vill outgrrrrow it.”

“Glad to hear it. Just one question?”

“Yes.”

"WHEN?”