I remember about 10 years ago, someone I was in a brief relationship with barbed me about how many Facebook friends I had.
I also began to notice something more disturbing. The more friends I had, the more friend requests I received. Clearly an algorithm was at work, showing and suggesting my profile to more people. This in itself felt yucky, like a middle school popularity contest I never signed up for yet was clearly complicit in playing along with. One of the things about Facebook is that it thrives on Facebook.
How many times have I posted something about the platform itself, the ways it has changed or the ways it does harm? By keeping my focus on Facebook, I am participating in something so labyrinthine and circular one has to wonder what the point is.
And yet - the point, the point. Snippets of conversation, an endless parade of meals and outfits, some of which are quite enjoyable, a rally at Gate B-3, a fight about masks in the Cinnabon, occasional serendipitous and deeply kind encounters, giving money to someone who has been living in a bathroom or signing a petition after TSA agents yet again profiled someone based on perceived race or gender, impromptu poetry readings and academic lectures, here and there bumping into an old friend or really getting to know a new one during a long wait for a flight that never seems to come.
The lights never dim, the stores never close, and every time you think about looking for the sliding exit doors, you get distracted by something and put it off for another day.
