Coyotes

I've finally figured out what I don't like about social media: Everything. The armchair activist culture that has grown up around it... the incessant trolling and bullying of anyone who has an independent thought... the intrusiveness of spying on a user's every mouse scroll... the profound personal consequences for any and every trivial thing one says... None of it sits well with me.

When I first joined, a simple, jovial message appeared on the screen: "Welcome to Facebook!" it read, immediately suggesting people and groups for me to connect with. It seemed innocent and harmless.

Fifteen years later though, as I reflect back upon that fateful day, I can see the dishonesty even of that brief greeting. What it should have said was: "Welcome to Facebook! It's our business to know yours!" because that was their modus operandi from the beginning. And as I type this, their insidious algorithms have gleaned more about me than even my own mother knows.

So why am I still using the site? For the simple reason that there's no real way to opt out at this point. Social media has become ubiquitous. It's everywhere on the internet. Whether you're a user or not, they can still spy on you, help spread photos and false rumors about you, destroy your reputation, and conduct all other manner of online mischief. It's like being born into the Mafia: you can never really escape it, and just have to live under its suffocating shadow, with its Sword of Damocles perpetually hanging above your head.

Today's youth know of nothing else, but I'm ancient enough to remember the old internet I logged onto as a boy. My Old Man, who was born a New Yorker, told me at the time: "Son, enjoy this wild-west frontier while it lasts, because one day the 'civilized' world will get its hands on it, and then the freedom of the Net will be no more."

I never thought I'd say this, but my Old Man was right. I miss the old internet. It was a place where people said what they meant, and meant what they said, no matter how rude or obnoxious. It was also governed by pure anonymity: all men were boys, all women were men, and all children were the FBI. And it really required skill and poise to navigate; not the boring, dumbed-down point-click-read-scroll of today.

That old internet is gone forever, replaced by the Big Brother world we now live in, where over half the "people" are really just chat bots spamming advertisements, and the rest are more interested in personal clout and character assassinations than being educated by actual debate. And one day soon even this shadow of an ancient digital age will be gone, and there will be nothing substantive in its place. The Internet as we know it will be dead, and some significant spark within the human spirit will have died with it.

I will echo the words of my Old Man, who I once thought crazy, but now see as wise beyond his years: enjoy what you have, while you have it. Because nothing on this Earth lasts forever.