Facebook reminds me of why AOL (America OnLine) was so popular. It was easy. You see you were on the internet when you logged into AOL, but that wasn’t the point, the point was to BE on AOL. The chat rooms, the small groups, hell they served news and games as well. AOL grew so large it bought Time-Warner. It was “AOL Time Warner” for most of the 90’s.
And we, nerds that is, spent time trying to convince people that this World Wide Web was a thing that they should go to, go out, find stuff, leave the walls of AOL.
But it would take years, it would take cable internet and broadband before AOL’s rule collapsed.
And yet when it did communities were lost, friends separated.
Facebook is similar, in the sense that it too wants to be everything. It wants you to go to Facebook and never leave. Chat, make a group, read the news, hell watch videos and play games. All here.
And so yet again we, not quite nerds this time, maybe old nerds? Cynical people?, we never the less, are again trying to convince people (myself included) that there is a world outside of Facebook and we need to abandon this place.
We need to abandon this place.
Nothing, and I mean nothing that Facebook contributes to our lives is worth what it takes from us, what the company does to hurt us, as a people, what the algorithms force in front of us to instill anger, separation and discontent, because those things drive clicks.
And yet we are all still here. Because it feels inevitable, I assume, because it feels like “where else would we go?”
And unlike the MySpace exodus, or even the Digg one, I think the answer is actually the AOL one.
You see, we didn’t run to another AOL. We didn’t just meet up somewhere else and do the same thing with another company. We scattered, like stars, all over.
We made forums and blogs, we made web-rings, we made webpages that only existed because we really liked something and wanted to make a little space that showed it off.
The web was ours. Ours. Not facebook’s. Not Twitter’s. Not google’s.
This post won’t get you to leave Facebook. If you have read this far you’ve already thought of at least three reasons why this is non-sense and you’re going to stay there anyways.
But that’s not quite what I want to convince you.
Just like AOL, the rest of the WWW is still there, so sure, log in, check up on things, but instead of hitting refresh for that third time? Instead of just staying in Facebook? Go out there and find something else.
Join a forum of gardeners. Find a blog about the train sets you like. Look for someone who writes about your local politics on their blog.
Find something that doesn’t have an app.
