Last week, I suddenly decided to suspend my Facebook account for a week. I did this to examine myself and the changes in my lifestyle that this suspension would create. Recently, I had found myself spending increasingly more time on Facebook than on more useful activities. So, I just wanted to log out of my Facebook account; but, I ended up by deciding not to open it for a week. This in itself spoke of the degree of Facebook addiction I already suffered from.
Rather than being a tool-based utility such as a computer, which for me is a typewriter cum storage system, digital apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on are instances of addiction-based technologies. For the last week, I have spent an average of thirty-one minutes a day or three hours and thirty seven minutes a week on Facebook from my cell phone alone. Were I to spend that much time per week in writing an essay, for instance, I would be able to produce four essays a month. It is quite obvious that the creative act of writing an essay engages better human possibilities than passive likes and responses on somebody’s post. This is, of course, a matter of personal priority. Yet, I am very much in the vice-like grip of technology that has waved its magic wand over my head and has turned me into an unthinking commodity of its market for the total amount of time I have spent passively clicking its ready-made likes and emojis. And that is a story of human will-power against Magician Technology.
Magician Technology need not be present “in person” to perform the trick. The eyes of the audience is on the magic wand that circles in the air. That’s what Facebook has done to us. It has charmed us with a virtual reality where iconic likes and loves flatter the naked emperor in us with confirmation of that which is not there. For where is the inviolable criteria with which to judge the sincerity of these likes and loves? And how do I or anyone else know just how sincere or honest the worded comments are? If there is no way to come up with truth, it is also true that manipulation of the user’s psyche along with a storm of misinformation has resulted in the obscurity of our perception of truths and facts. In a face-to-face conversation with a friend, not only his spoken words but his voice, tone, volume, rhythm, tilt of the head, turn of the nose, twinkle of the eyes or even a mere movement of the index would confirm the sincerity of his expressed sentiment. This brings friends closer together. But, we are addicted enough to dismiss one’s life-partner’s query to complete a comment on a virtual screen. Such is the tragedy of modern digital life.
The digital media has also fed us milk diluted with water and most of us are not even in a position to tell the two liquids apart. A couple of days ago, I met a friend of mine during my morning walk. He stopped me, ironically reminded me to keep social distance and vociferated the most recent conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19. His argument boiled down to this: The government is corrupt, he said. Does it have the right to treat people like this? To take away their fundamental right of free movement for so long? The well-placed ones are making money by mistreating people, by locking them inside their houses, and pretending that the corona virus is a big threat to life, whereas it is nothing but just another common cold or flu. Just a bit stronger, he admitted. I tried to explain to him that corruption issues and the corona pandemic issues should be kept apart and understood separately if we wanted to stay safe and healthy. I told him not to forget that this new virus is a reality we all will have to live with. He gave up on my understanding of the situation and bid me good-bye. I could not help recalling the number of Facebook posts that sounded like this friend of mine.
Misinformation is often more appealing to our thirst for stories than information, which lacks the touch of magic. Reality is ever so boring! Something that helps us point an accusatory index at someone else also satisfies our own sense of incompleteness through the discovery of another who is even less complete than we are and also seems to promise something better for the future. But hurled accusations are no seeds of improvement of the human situation. Just how misguided we can become when social media satisfies our soul with downy balls of narratives floating in the air is difficult to say. Perhaps I wanted to get away from all that too.
I feel better after a week of abstinence from Facebook. If I am sufficiently inspired, I may even log out of it and start scribbling thoughts in a copybook in search of a new career. But I also admit that it has been a long week.
September 19, 2020.
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