"I like how productive we are when we're together," Sarah says. "We decide we want to do something and we do it."
And yet I feel like I have to regularly like some things from people's feeds to show them I care about their lives. It's stupid.
We're sitting at Lulu's Coffee + Bakehouse on the northside on a sunny Thursday afternoon, Sarah nursing a hangover and me trying to figure out what spices are on the spiced walnuts in my salad. They're delicious. It's the third new coffee shop we've visited this summer in our tour of new writing locations. So far we haven't written as much as we'd planned, but I've certainly had a lot of lattes.
We've just resolved to stop checking Facebook until Monday. It's the result of many a discussion about how addicted we are to the platform, how it encourages narcissism, how you can get lost in your Facebook feed and not notice an hour's gone by. I use Facebook just as much as any normal person in 2016, and I wish I didn't. I've got especially negative feelings towards it at the moment because an old friend just shared some big news to her entire Facebook feed without sharing it personally with me first, and I'm still getting over the hurt feelings.
This is the kind of situation that didn't happen in the past. You didn't feel a need to broadcast your life on a public forum, to craft the perfectly worded message accompanied by the perfectly staged picture and then count how many likes it gets so you can determine how well you did. If your husband sends you flowers, do you not feel like it's a real moment unless you tell everyone you know about it? Why do they have to know about it? Are you trying to prove how much your husband loves you? If you find out you're pregnant, do you not feel like you're giving it enough weight if you don't post an ultrasound picture with a clever caption? What if we just stopped and enjoyed the moments in our lives with the people who are actually in our lives, not our high school friend we've haven't talked to in 10 years or the guy you did work for once a couple years ago? What if we didn't open ourselves up to everyone else's opinions and the picture-perfect lives they're trying to portray online?
I'm a little sensitive about it at the moment, but it's something I've been thinking about for awhile. There are a lot of reasons to like Facebook – it keeps you connected, it lets you share what's going on in your life on a daily basis with people who are far away, it lets you show a passive interest in people you've met without much effort. But I think I'm just tired of it. It doesn't feel real. It shouldn't replace talking to your friends, sending emails or letters, sending a text. Showing an actual interest in their lives.
I have a friend who constantly worries about how many likes she gets on things she posts.
"[Friend from high school] hasn't liked the thing I shared the other day," she says. "Do you think she's offended?"
Who cares?
And yet I feel like I have to regularly like some things from people's feeds to show them I care about their lives. It's stupid.
On Sunday evening in the middle of our Facebook hiatus, I texted Sarah:
"I'm going to have to get on Facebook in a minute to wish my dad Happy Father's Day. If I don't people will be offended."
Would they really? I don't know. My dad probably wouldn't care – I spent the weekend with him and said Happy Father's Day in person that morning. But I felt guilty. And so even though I'd felt wonderful all weekend, having deleted Facebook from my phone and not seen any notifications, any posts, any updates, I logged on and left a message on his wall. I had 47 notifications. None of them were important.