Early one morning my phone started making strange noises, not the usual BART is late noise but a system notification that something was going on with the phone. Wake up, grab glasses, check out phone: user authentication for facebook is not valid, please check password (or something like that) What? Shiite, okay, go check FB, I'm logged out pending verification of my real name. What?! Fuck! I'd read about it but never thought it would hit *me*, I'm too fabulous for that! (Right?)
Read an email about verifying my identity, tried to log on, kept getting an error. There must be some way around this, I was starting to panic. How dare they cut me off from the world? How dare they tell me what to do? How d-a-r-e they (hiss)! At this point, even if I am not allowed to log on FB is sucking away time, I need to get moving, work calls!
Packed up the boy, got to BART, sent this message "I've been hit by the real name policy on Facebook - don't know when or if I will return to the medium - bummer, because I have a lot of content there that will be lost :( Unless I can get some ID in the name of Fabulous Lixa (I'm trying)... However, today has become take your kid to work day!"
Work passed, slowly without the distraction that is FB. I also realized how much I used it, not just to see what people were doing but to get news stories, contact people, see odd things, learn stuff (okay, now I'm just trying to convince my self that FB is good) I could survive without it, right? I doctored my ID and sent it off to FB to verify my identity (I might have committed a felony, not sure how that works if I am never going to present ti to anyone else) I got a 24 hour reprieve and could access my amount, I thought I had won! I quickly archived my data (did you know you can get a copy of your FB data?) Posted a few "They won't let me use my name" status updates and went to bed. That first day without FB was tough.
Then I packed up the car and the kids, we headed off to go camping, no signal, no phone serve, no FB, no big deal. Oy, was I wrong! Campground has WiFi, last year I posted a ton of pictures for the family to see, this year, none. IG and Flickr really just didn't do it for me. I felt lost, disconnected, alone in the digital wilderness unable to make sense of this poison oak riddled world I had found myself in. Yes, river; yes, kids; yes, friends; yes, silliness; no FB. You have to be kidding me! Okay, frolic, play, swim, mini-golf, hike, no one will know, does that mean it didn't happen? Man, I’m in a sad place.
Okay, home, ready to face another week without FB, can I do it? Got another “Help us verify your identity” email, so I sent a business card and my RID card, got a “Thanx, you can’t use your account while we verify…” Really?? Fuckers!! 2 days later another “Help us verify your identity” Now I’m just getting mad. I have created a #FUFB hashtag and just post pictures of my daily emails from FB that say “Fabulous, you have notifications waiting” Really? It will taunt me with my profile name yet not let me actually log in with that name? People can tag me in things, but I can’t see it because I can’t log in.
Friday, 10 July, Oh shit! Now that I can’t link to my FB I have LOST a ton of contact information in my phone. Fuck! Really?? Sons of bitches! Now to try an rebuild my address book?? (Shakes fist in the direction of Menlo Park) #FUFB!!! I try to calm myself, really, it will be okay, sure, you may have lost a person or two, most you can recapture as time goes by, it will be okay. Much to my surprise though, the people I am coming into contact with in the world are shocked to hear about a “Real name policy” they had no idea, some don’t use their real names on FB and are now worried they will be hit. They are mad too. Today we started getting pictures of the new grand baby!! Exciting, amazing, can’t wait to meet him; man, I can’t post his picture anywhere so that those folks I reconnected with at the 30 year reunion will see him, because FB doesn’t think I’m real enough :( Okay, send a gazillion text messages, I feel like I’m back at the turn of the century. This is just ridiculous.
It just keeps getting better and better, some days I'm sure I will cave and just throw my last name out there, I miss people, I miss the interactions, the updates, the silliness! #FUFB
The next week is peppered by random FB frustrations. Several notifications of what I'm missing, finding out I've missed event notifications, my boss saying "Did you see this on FB?" Over and over. My mom calls and says her sister is concerned because she can't see any updates, my dad, my original paranoid model, doesn't understand the big deal. I try to explain, over and over; then I find a statement from Zuck saying a "Real name" need only be an "Authentic name" a nick name would work, if that is what people know you by, unfortunately I can't find a govt issued ID in the Fabulous Lixa name... And, the verification engine at FB doesn't allow for anything other than their "acceptable forms" You can't get a real person, help desk requires a FB log in, there are no numbers posted, I guess I trek over the Dumbarton and bang on the door, but I'd have to present my ID to get past security. I'm stuck in a machine loop and I want out!
I have been surprised to read that there are people who voluntarily opt out of the FB because of what it means. FB has become so intertwined in our daily life people don't think about it any more. Important announcements go out on FB, plans, events, connections, news, etc. And we don't realize what that does to interpersonal interactions. I have been an avid consumer/user of electronic media for a few decades now, blogging (before it was called that) and documenting my trip through this life, I have fallen for the ease of FB, the centralized notion of access and reach that FB affords; never really thinking too much about the implications. If we continue to blindly allow this "free" service to weave itself more tightly into our daily lives we soon will not be able to live without it, then FB achieves it's goal of becoming the web, being the only place people get their information, and then it controls what we see, hear feel... At that point we might as well be wired into the FB matrix.
When this started I was pissed, then I was annoyed, slightly panicked at the withdrawal I was feeling from it all, the loss was palpable and troubling. I had decided to just leave it be for a month, not entertain the notion of making a new profile until the month was done. Now, I've survived a month and my desire to reconnect hasn't waned but my desire to not be part of the machine again seems to be winning...
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