Facebook has stopped being a place where I see the faces of my friends and instead where I go if I want to view and be hocked my own peculiar range of interests. For me, evidently, this is notebooks, camping gear, violent history facts, anything anti-Trump, cable-knit sweaters, and shirts with animals on them.
I’m not saying they’re wrong. I mean, I haven’t been camping in 7 years and before that it was another 10. But still, I like looking at the gear from my armchair.
Anyone online knows how disturbingly well Facebook seems to ‘know’ us these days. Making this more Twilight Zoney is the fact that they do it so blatantly and so unabashedly. Yes, we’re stealing your personal information and no, we don’t care if you know it. We all know that there’s a huge price to pay for simply slowing down over an item. Pause and look at a history meme and you all but guarantee that your feed will consist of ten more about Marcus Aurelius and Ivan the Terrible down the pike.
What gives this unease its ‘the cell has always been unlocked’ flavor is that it works. Facebook gives me a history fact being acted out by AI characters dangling over the uncanny valley, and I go ‘huh.’ And then I go to Wikipedia. In the last months I have looked up the last battle in WWII, the German soldier who claims to have killed 2,000 Allied troops on D-Day, who invented the Margarita, and the horrific fate of a captured unit of the first Bulgarian Empire. This is not to mention things I already knew – like how Cicero died, the Malmedy Massacre, and who made the first pizza.
Things that become apparent – besides the fact that diplomacy has come a long way since 1014. Perhaps slightly more upsetting is the fact that my world evidently revolves about food, booze, and violence throughout history. But the facts. They’re so much fun.
So. We grin, we bear it. The little dopamine hits help.
In an odd turn, Reddit seems to have forgotten who I am completely. My feed used to at least somewhat usher in my interests to a degree that was comforting. At comfortable intervals my interests would pop up: cats, movies, politics, The Office, shih tzus, leopards eating faces, and what could go wrong in any given situation.
Now, nothing like this happens. I have no idea what Reddit is driving at and I have no idea where it’s planning on taking me. This was at first sad, but the result has been positive: I look at it a lot less these days. I felt oddly let down. This got worse on Sundays.
On Sundays, we sometimes treat ourselves to Indian food. There’s something about warm spices and the residue of colonial terror that really brings a weekend together. It was on this past Sunday that we discussed the elephant in the room. I say it.
“I wonder what my chana will be like tonight.”
“Hopefully my Rogan Josh will be as good this week as it was last week.”
We laugh. But the fact is, our go-to Indian place has yet to serve us the same meal the same way twice. My favorite is chana with lamb: warm spices, chickpeas, lamb. That’s where the similarities end. Sometimes the sauce is thick and hearty, sometimes it’s got less in it. Sometimes it’s brown, at times more rust-colored. There is no way to know.
And, with great shame, what I found myself wishing this last Sunday – after pushing the order button – was that our Indian restaurant knew me as well as Facebook.
I know.
I know.
I know, I said!
It’s like wishing a cozy little café offered the soulless interior of a Starbucks.
I wish the world would decide if it knows us or not and get on with it. I mean what’s the alternative? I get offline, get a life, read actual history, and learn to cook chana myself?
I would gladly do that, but it seems Facebook is heading into an Ancient Apocalypse and squirrel shirt phase, and I don’t want to miss anything.
