JOHNSON – This Boomer says goodbye to Facebook

SO, I’VE BEEN a Facebook user since about 2007.

My kids (and recently a grandkid) have been saying, “Hey Boomer, no one uses Facebook, get with the times.”

First … with a birthyear of 1964, yes … I have to admit that I am on the very final bleeding edge of the generation defining term of Boomer.  Generally, I reject such a label as my parents were also Boomers, having been born at the very beginning edge of the Boomer generational year of 1946 … and between myself and them … we have little in common regarding generational characteristics.

They were pretty much incapable of doing anything with technology, needing pre setup direct icons on their PC desktops to access email, will not engage with social media and although accept cell phones, wonder at the black magic involved in their design and creation.  How many times did I have to teach mom how to use a debit card?

Conversely, I have always been an avid technology buff, my first computer was an IBM XT … circa 1983, where I had to learn pre-MS DOS, and slowly moved along with both computer hardware and software as the years progressed.

Today, I build, repair and update actual complete computers for myself and family and friends, and here at home am up to date with current trends and products, as well as technology news regarding handheld tech, AI GTPChat like software and headset displays, as well as keep up with technology news in general.

Otherwise, I don’t think like a Boomer.  I wholeheartedly reject much of the more conservative social beliefs of Boomerism that my parents’ generation encapsulated.  As well, my popular music tastes aren’t anywhere near theirs; they hated my Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd when I was young, and just didn’t understand my later forays into Grunge, Punk and Metal.  Most Boomers see that list and think … ya … no.

In summation, my ego disapproves of and vetos the Boomer label.

Eyeroll … “OK Boomer” … sigh.  Moving on.

Social media wise, I have a lot of accounts, most of which are unused and inactive, I have them for when a link points at a news piece that involves a post on them.  I have never paid attention to, and have basically always given Twitter my own eye roll … even before Elon Musk drove it into the ground.  It’s always been just a compendium of excrement, and I stayed away.  Same with most other Socials, but I recognize the value of having a login on them.

The two exceptions are Youtube and Facebook.

Youtube is educational and entertainment for me, as I can curate and view what I want; tech news, history and science documentaries, cooking, and other personal interests.

Facebook?  My use has been twofold:

The only access I have to many earlier in life friends and contacts is via Facebook messenger, so I always maintained it.  My kids and present friend contacts also connect through that as well.

Otherwise, years ago I began to see that many people’s use of Facebook does not interest me.  People I know like to take a picture of and post an image of their dinner, or many other like to repost the latest meme about cats, politics or weightloss … or whatever crosses their mind.

Here’s the thing, and the Hot Take.

“Love you all … sorry … but I don’t care.”

I realized a long time ago that my Facebook time surrounded knuckle arthritis inducing amounts of doom scrolling past all this stuff, to what I DO like to click into … news links about local, national and international news stories.

I began to learn that that’s what I wanted Facebook for … access to news, not published by Facebook, but notification of links to stories carried by actual mainstream publishers on their own websites; Global, CTV, CBC, Al Jazeera … whatever … even Armchair Mayor.  On Facebook, I find out there is a new article that interests me, so I click and go to the news site to read it.

So, about a decade ago I began ‘curating’ my Facebook feed, blocking friends and other peoples cat memes and dinner pics, and almost all personal contact posts from my main feed.

If actual people really needed to contact me personally, all they had to do is send an IM via messenger.  Love to hear from them and setup visits or whatever.

But the actual ‘doom scrolling’ of my Facebook feed became news sites only.

I treated it as the contact or curation point – the one stop shop – of access to world news.  I realized that by doing this, I not only kept up pretty well as to what’s going on locally, in Canada and around the world, but clicking on a Facebook post to a news site (let’s say Global) to follow a particular story, put me on their main website where I could read the story, and from there I would quickly take a look at other stories … so side or parallel news searching was easy.

I was informed.  I used Facebook like this for over a decade.

Then the Canadian Government engaged in this tiff with Facebook and Google to tax these social network sites, as a way to subsidize Canadian news producers who can’t find a way to make a profit otherwise. Facebook responded by just blocking news sites from Canadian eyes.  Boom … gone.

I could go on about this issue, as I disagree with how Canadian news producers and the Canadian government feel about it, but that’s not the focus of this column … so we move on.

At the end of the day, my access point just fell away. The news just stopped.

Without those links to all those external publishers, I wasn’t reminded to click elsewhere on the Global site, for example, so my awareness of a lot of other stories just dropped away as well.  I have to actually ‘go there’ manually when I think about it, or intentionally research stories to inform myself.

Recent reports show that large Canadian news sources have not suffered from this loss of access by facebook users, but a great many small news publishers across the country who relied on Facebook user access, have closed; this change being one of the reasons.

At the end of the day, I realize my use of Facebook is unusual, I would have assumed that large news publishers would have seen a dip in engagement, as well as Facebook itself … but I am wrong on both accounts.

You could say that the eventual real-world effect of this Facebook/ Canadian government and Canadian news publishers’ squabble, was to un-democratize Canadian news.

Anyway, moving on.

Since then, I realized I was still habituated in the act of scrolling Facebook, even though my FB setup had now failed.  My Facebook time per day fell substantially … and recently I was reminded that there was no reason to be there at all.

As happens to a lot of people, it appears a couple weeks ago, my barely used Facebook account was hacked by a malicious actor.  I couldn’t log on, and was met by a popup message that my account had been suspended, and I could not access it.  It did provide a link to ‘my oculus files’, which when I did, I found a bunch of zipped PDF files of friends lists, images and stuff from my account.  Cool that they provide that.

The reason I mention this is because I noticed on the friend list a new ‘friend’ … I did not, and would not ‘friend’. A ‘Kizzy Southern’ person somehow managed to get on my friend list … at an exact time that I was at work and not online at all, and subsequently destroyed my account, or they did enough spoofing or ad damage so Facebook auto suspended the account.  On my wife’s FB account we searched out this person, and quickly realized the page was fake.

Here comes the Rabbit Hole.

Facebook/Meta said in their FAQ’s that they would send me an email where I could appeal this.  They didn’t, which tells me that this jerk changed the email address attached to the account … lovely.

Spending hours … actually … days …  clicking through all Facebook and Meta help and support pages, to try to find an actual phone number, email address or instant messaging box where I could request a review of the situation and recover the account was fruitless.  Meta does not have any public facing human support options if you are not logged into your account … which their system does not allow me to do.  It’s a circle.

Soo … online I go, Reddit etc., to see if anyone else in this situation found a backdoor access to Facebook support.  Nada.  A few of them turned out to be scams themselves … where I had to say; “Sure, I’ll give you remote access if you first send me an email from a registered Facebook address” … click.

Soo … where are we now?

– My Facebook friends are about to be inundated with crap in my name; scams, ads and attacks.  Sorry all … that was probably the original target for the attack; the friend list.

– I have no way of reversing it, so 17 years of Facebook group membership, activity, and access to past friends … poof.  This is the real loss, because many of these old school and band chums and I, only had access to each other via Facebook messenger … so I have no phone numbers anymore. Didn’t think to.

– Present people in my life aren’t a problem, a quick call or text to inform I’m not there anymore … which they would eventually figure out as I just don’t have a page.

– aside the Facebook news feed not existing anymore … the only other reason to be there for me were these people that I have lost contact with, so the final attachment is gone.

Cue: Chrome settings, remove Facebook as a startup tab site … just walk away.

Here we are a week later, and you know what?  I’m better off.  NOT because of the loss of news access or access to old friends, I mourn those … but everything else.  It’s just over.  No more auto open, no more doom scrolling people’s memes or dinner pics or anything.  No more auto access to community threads populated by antivax/ convoy mental illness … it’s all just gone.

The massive … massive time sink is over.

I am moving on after 17 years. Heck … that’s long enough to birth a kid and get them to grad.
Long time.

Any emotive connection to the loss of something so habituated, is just a human reaction to grief … to change.  But in this case, it wasn’t even over anything real.

Things come and go in life, and as we get older, we become more resilient to change and loss, even if it gets a little harder to change habits.

Say such a thing to my kids and grandkids … all I get is an eyerolling;

“OK Boomer.”

David Johnson is a Kamloops resident, community volunteer and self described maven of all things Canadian.