Tag Archives: Jim Arnold books

The Reasons I Left Facebook

Yep, I retired from the Facebook like-athon on January 1, my one and only New Year’s resolution this year.

Two weeks later, so, how’s it going? Do I have regrets, do I have posting or “liking” withdrawal?

Have to admit, there’ve been a couple of times when I wanted to “share” something, like a thought about a movie, or the weather, and there was no one to “share” it with — something I would have just typed into the Facebook “status update” box.

What I find most odd about that is how quickly my mind was trained to “share” my life in such an artificial way. It’s kind of frightening. Five short years is all it took and I’m that digital lemming!

So, actually, the world did not really need to know that the wind is knocking over plants on my balcony, or that isn’t it funny that two closeted gay actors both have lead roles (as straight men) in “American Hustle” (you figure it out), or, whatever else it was I was thinking about that particular day.

This is the last message I posted on Facebook, as a sort-of explanation to “Friends,” both the real kind and the Facebook kind:

Facebook Friends: With the New Year, I’m going to be signing off Facebook. My decision is a combination of wanting more of my focus to be in the offline (real?) world as well as crucial privacy and business model concerns (Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t need to be making any more money on my digital assets, thankyouverymuch), as well as wanting to devote more time to my own social media outlet, my blog (jimarnoldblog.com/blog)! I’ve tremendously enjoyed all the banter, throwbacks and flashbacks, sharing and reconnecting and hope to continue doing so—just not here. Those who don’t have my contact information already can find it at the blog. Thanks for keeping in touch, and have a great 2014.

A lot of bloggers and others have posted their own reasons for leaving social media, specifically Facebook, and I’ve been influenced by those. Some of my favorites are here and here.

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These are my own top reasons for leaving Facebook, in no particular order:

I really, really, really don’t want to see pictures of your food. I mean gag me, OK? I don’t know why this grosses me out so much, but it really does. Why would you think this is interesting to anybody? We’re lucky to be living in a country that (at least so far) is not starving.
Facebook connections are not real connections. They’re not real friendships. Real friendships involve messy interpersonal actions over time. Anything virtual keeps that human messiness at arm’s length, and I find I want, I crave, the messy. Bring it on.
I began to realize I was presenting to the virtual world a highly curated version of myself, hoping that it would somehow be attractive and acceptable to a large number of people I hadn’t really met or known in the physical world. This is probably pathological. I had to stop it to remain sane. (or at least somewhat sane)
The vast majority of my 800-ish Facebook friends were/are people I had maybe met once or twice. A lot of them turned out to be oversharers, and I found myself finding out way, way more about them then I ever dreamt possible. It was lazy; you click here, you click there, you see an old photo, you find out their politics. Truthfully, this seemed like creepy stalking to me. I supposed that others probably did it to me. Eeeewww.
I read a book. It’s called “Who Owns the Future,” by Jaron Lanier. He presents the idea that way things are going in the digital economy, it will only be those who own the biggest computers (the Facebooks, the Googles, the Amazons) who will make any money in the future and the rest of us will basically be serfs, fighting over the scraps. The trade that’s presented to everyone on Facebook is that you can use the service for free, in exchange for handing over digital rights to your life and your data. This is not in any way, shape or form a fair trade. The only way Facebook makes their money is for you to give them your data. You need to be compensated in some real, monetary way for this above and beyond access to the service for free. Would you like to stop giving Mark Zuckerberg your life?

Facebook increases isolation, rather than alleviating it. By comparing myself to the highly curated versions of my Facebook “friends,” I often felt worse about my own circumstances rather than better. I also could not say one more time to someone in real time, “Oh, yes, I know you on Facebook, we’re Facebook friends!” I mean really, how lame is that?
Time’s a wastin’. I would frequently fall down the Facebook rabbit hole, reading all sorts of links, especially to political articles, etc. I’d look up and wonder where the hour had gone, without a lick of my real work getting done.
Marketing my books on Facebook was a fool’s errand. I found this out, that people on Facebook aren’t interested in reading books, for the most part. Sure, if you’re Stephen King or Anne Rice or someone like that, it might be cool to have them as your “friend.” But I found that in my case, nobody was looking for books to read on that particular platform. My time is much better spent writing the next great book, or possibly interacting with readers on a site like goodreads.com – which is specifically for people who like to read.

I’m sure there’s more, I’ll probably add to this list. Why would you leave Facebook? Or do you love it?

Here’s another for me: name-calling. I noticed it was really easy to get caught up in comments to posts, particularly bickering, partisan political ones. And how easy it was to fall into cowardly, obnoxious name-calling. So I may have called S. Palin a c*** on Facebook. Somewhere, if there is a heaven, my dear mother would not be happy. And honestly, I don’t want to be that guy who calls people easy vulgar names on social media. (Even if she is a c***.)

The Forest Dark — Outtakes

Sometimes you just can’t include everything in the final, finished book. So it is with this passage — which goes into more detail about Ronnie and Noah, a relationship that still haunts me from “The Forest Dark.” There is nothing like love and lust in your 20s. This does diminish as one ages, unfortunately. But you can resurrect it in your imagination, and in your writing.

From “The Forest Dark” (left unpublished as part of the final draft of the book):

Ronnie Perkins was only the third man Noah Baldock had ever had sex with, but the two of them together tried to make up for any lack in this department. Ronnie was, in many ways, the surprise answer to all the hopes Noah had through those years when he mostly lied to himself that he was straight, and that all would be well once the right woman came along for him to love.

He was pretty sure no one saw them trade blowjobs that afternoon, out of sight but just yards away from one of Silver Lake’s major streets. When they were finished, Noah, now buzzed, grabbed Ronnie’s hand – calloused and warm, tough from his weights – for the few steps back down the alley toward the RTD stop. A little Latin girl in a frilly, bright pink skirt skipped by unexpectedly and he disengaged, the years of denial a much more powerful driver than his new-found lust.

“Turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese I really think so,” Noah sang quietly, but Ronnie had already nodded off against his shoulder on the short, hot bus ride to the apartment. Later, there was enough in a Tequila bottle for almost two full shots apiece, considerably more sex and an alarm clock that rang way too soon for a Monday morning, rousing them both out of a dead sleep.

* * *

After a shared bowl of Wheaties, half an orange and black coffee, Noah walked Ronnie down to the express bus stop, which would take him the ten or so miles to the beach. He worked at Equipment out on Channel Road, a store that sold T-shirts, suntan oil, umbrellas and snacks. As fun as the job was hanging out at the ocean with all the cute guys and other people on vacation, Ronnie’s position didn’t pay enough for him to have wheels. He spent an enormous amount of time on the RTD.

###

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How do you say “Los Feliz?”

Enjoyed this. I’ve always been of the camp who pronounced it “Loss – FEE-liz”, instructed as I was, not only by native Angelenos, but also by Joan Crawford as “Mildred Pierce,” who has one of her namesake restaurants in this neighborhood.

What better guide could there possibly be? It’s also the location where a lot of my novel “The Forest Dark” takes place, locations real and somewhat imagined. Indeed, I lived there for four years on Rosalia Road, and, if you count the adjacent Silver Lake location of a former apartment on Auburn Street, a grand total of about 15 years.

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