Month: December 2017

There goes Jones!

I lived most of my life in #Alabama. Spent too much time tolerating bigots just to get by without making waves because i had things to do. Sometimes I whined #notallalabamians when my state did something reprehensible yet a-rsfcking-gain. Didn’t matter. Our name was still used to represent everything embarrassing about the South in 21st Century.

I was not an effective advocate for getting our heads out of our asses. I just voted for losing candidates and complained on the Internet. Surprise! It changed nothing. Alabama is insular and self-spiting even compared to the rest of the Deep South.

If Judge Meatwad wins every Alabamian and everyone who cares about Alabama is going to have to endure an unprecedented tsunami of scorn and it won’t matter if we deserve it individually or not. It won’t matter how many college football games Bama or Auburn win.  Emphasizing college football is just another way we let ourselves get played by the reprehensible oligarchy that run the state anyway. But that’s another story.

It’s coming.  You won’t like it. I won’t like it.  It may not be fair, but it is understandable.

Clyde Lee Smith
SWVA, December 12, 2017.

Many people post manifestos when they leave Facebook, as if they are nailing their words to the door of the Facebook Cathedral. Why should I be any different?

The TL;DR summary is that I got tired of pretending to have more friends than I actually have. If they can’t be bothered to stay in touch in *all* the other ways available to us in 2017, then there wasn’t that much friendship to begin with.

Dear Facebook friends and contacts:

I’m eliminating Facebook from my online life.

I remain on on Instagram (yes, I KNOW). I remain on Twitter for now at least, and I have email, and a damn website, *and* a couple of carefully neglected ERRRR curated blogs.

I don’t need to tell you that that this platform makes its users into marks in return for ease of use and shiny things to click. Or the privacy issues that make even the most paranoid conspiracy enthusiasts struggle to keep up.

(Monitoring what I type and DON’T send? Why yes, please I just wanna see more more MOAR CONTENT.)

But more than anything I resent Facebook for injecting itself into personal connections I have miraculously maintained and treasured over a lifetime that has already lasted a decade longer than I expected.

I have finally overcome the feeling that nobody will care about me unless I post and entertain them. That’s such an childish attitude. One that I have recognized in several students during my experience at the local high school.

And it’s an attitude nurtured by this supremely manipulative platform.

The blunt portion of this letter follows and I mean it without malice. But it’s the most important part:

If leaving Facebook means we no longer communicate, there wasn’t much deep communication to begin with, just superficiality. It means you all meant more to me than I meant to you. And I’m no longer afraid of losing that.

Hell, as far as 99% of you know I’ve been dead for years and this account is another FB artificial intelligence experiment. Or some punkass in Russia. Or the White House. Same diff. (heh)

I hope to be around. But this account goes dark at midnight tonight.

Thank you.

C

2017 December 02
The Bent Road
Meadows of Dan, VA

Twitter @clydeleesmith 
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