A Year Without a Face(book)
When I was in 8th grade, my world history teacher offered my class an extra credit assignment worth an additional twenty points on our end of year grade. I didn’t need the points. Not to toot my own horn, but I will for just a moment in saying that I was the county world history champion that year. I got a fancy certificate and everything. The assignment my teacher offered was to not watch TV for two weeks and to keep a daily journal about what we did instead.
Not one to stand on the sidelines while my classmates were having all the non-TV watching fun, I decided to do it. Plus, I had a VCR so I knew I could tape all of my favorite shows. China Beach, Murphy Brown, Rosanne, The Wonder Years, The Golden Girls, and ALF could all wait. The hardest show to give up for two weeks was Oprah. She was on everyday. How could I live without her? She was like a second mother to me. But, I did. I didn’t even try to tape them all.
I dutifully covered my boxy television set with a series of layered scarves so that I would not tempted to peek. Unlike today’s laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets, a TV back in those days was too big to move. I set up my VCR to tape my favorite shows. A few times, I didn’t hear the gears turning or the little wheels moving, and I knew my favorite shows were not being taped. But, I let it go, content to commit to this experiment.
Around this time two things happened. One, Salman Rushdie released The Satanic Verses and it was very controversial. Since I was allowed to listen to the radio without breaking the rules, I was inundated with stories about the fatwa on Rushdie’s head for disgracing Islam. Given the bru ha ha surrounding this book, the next time we went to the library, I had my mom check it out for me. I was too young to get it with my card. I tried reading a chapter, just like I had tried reading War & Peace as my beach reading the summer between 3rd and 4th grades. Both books were about as equally successful.
The second thing that happened, you probably remember, if you were of age in 1989. On March 2nd of that year, 250 million viewers watched as Pepsi released Madonna’s new single and controversial video for Like A Prayer. Though I was a loyal and devoted fan of the Material Girl, I kept my no-TV commitment and I did not watch it. I did get special permission from my teacher to listen to it, rationalizing that listening to something on TV is like listening to the radio, which we were allowed to do.
Madonna does not disappoint and I loved the song. I vividly remember dancing alone in my tiny bedroom willing my hands to stay away from the many, many scarves that now hung over the TV set. I heard the whizz of the VCR, but sadly, later found that it had not recorded it. Nowadays you can go on YouTube and see almost anything you want. But, back then, you had to see it live. It was a different era. And that brings me to my point today.
I am again off Facebook if by “off Facebook” you count saying goodbye to my friends around the globe and letting them know I was “deactivating” my account. I did that and intended not to be on the platform at all, but I am in two ongoing classes that only post readings to the big F. To solve this conundrum, I created an account with my spiritual name and I have no friends. I probably have no friends because the spiritual name is one that I do not use, but was given to me by request from the Kundalini yoga community. Also, I am not telling anyone that I have succumbed to the big F after only two months of sobriety. I intend to stay friend free and delete this account when my two classes end, despite the temptation to do otherwise.
Since early in my Facebook days, all the way back to 2010, I have taken “Facebook fasts.” I did so without the accompanying “Facebook fanfare” that can come when people take a 1–3 day break from the platform and feel the need to tell all of their friends and followers. I felt no such need. Every year I quietly slipped off for 40 Facebook-free days and no one was the wiser, except for one friend who lives far away and my ex-boyfriend’s mother who was worried about me. I assured them both I was fine and that this was just something I would do every year to keep myself sane.
Thinking back to my first experiment in purposeful media reduction when a TV was still a hot ticket item on Christmas wishlists, I wonder why it has become so hard to turn devices off. I know that high tech companies and marketing pros spend oodles of money to ensure that we want to stay connected. In 1989, we didn’t have to contend with the scroll, which I call the “scroll of death” because it just keeps going and it sucks you in. No, we didn’t have that back in the 80s. But, Madonna was my favorite performer in the world.
She was my idol and I dressed like her, along with every other woman in my generation. I wore the black bangles, the bra on the outside look, and even had an exact replica of the jacket she wore in Desperately Seeking Susan that was the most expensive purchase I had ever made up until that point. I loved her, and I still do. And yet, I was able to behave myself and not watch that commercial, even though there was no replay, no YouTube, and no way to repeat that historic moment. Which makes me wonder why it’s gotten so hard to get away from technology now.
There’s got to be more to it than the stickiness of the scroll and the cleverness of targeted ad campaigns. I think we’re lonely. Disconnected. Afraid of the future, bored with the present, reminiscent of the past. Not all of us, to be sure, and not all of the time. But, our culture has trended towards increasing levels of depression and anxiety, and that was before the pandemic added extra stress.
I am now at the two month mark of deactivating my Facebook account and I have apparently become someone who feels like that is something to proclaim. I plan to go at least a year and then approach, cautiously, like a deer considering crossing the road. I want to bring the same beginner’s mind to this project, lifestyle choice, whatever you call it, that I did back in 1989. I don’t want to pontificate about what this journey may bring. In 1989 I certainly did not try to jump ahead and try to predict the outcome of my experiment. I took it day by day, watched, and listened. I hope to do that again this year. I might even get around to reading The Satanic Verses.
