Notable webizen Wil C. Fry recently posted that he is severely curtailing his Facebook use. I laud the idea of leaving something that doesn’t work, like the job with the abusive boss or the boyfriend with the cocaine addiction. But Facebook, well…

I have decided over recent months that Facebook works fine for me, and the reason is that I make Facebook my b!tch. I don’t patrol Facebook for gratification, and I don’t pick it up when I’m bored. I renew daily my commitment to read good writing, write in various platforms (this site, my teaching site, and on paper), and converse with the people around me.

Throwback to 1995… My Open Mic Nyte friend Timothy asserts that the next generation will have little interest in apps or the web, and will want to do everything on paper.

Facebook serves me. It bends over or kneels down at my beck and call. It exists for me.

A couple of touchstones for leaving the “blue god” are a recent data sharing scandal, and the recent revelation that you can view some very deeply-buried Facebook data about your preferences that is mined for delivering advertising to you. I went in to that field and turned off everything I could.

Here are some “best practices” tips for using Facebook, most of which the blue addict won’t be able to do…

• Don’t click on clickbate, no matter how interesting the “headline.” Number three will instantly transport you to Michelle Rodriguez’ wet, quivering nipple! Always a lie, people.
• “Hide Ad” is your best friend.
• “Hide Post” is your best friend.
• Go to Settings > Ads and turn off everything that you don’t want Facebook to see, have or use.
• If someone posts a meme, or even an opinion, that you find offensive or reprehensively ignorant, it won’t help to argue with them. If you really don’t want to see their stuff any more, just “unfollow” them, and they will leave your feed, but they can still see your stuff, at least until they unfollow you for the same reason.
• Stop using Facebook as a platform for social change. It’s the wrong place for that. You won’t change the Jesus memers there, so just let them do their thing, and let Facebook show them your thing.
• If you clicked on an article called, “Thinking of starting a blog in 2018? Don’t,” don’t believe it for a second. That article is about marketing, not personal expression. If you want to curate an online journal, photoblog, thought experiment or coffee fan site, go for it.

One serious mistake many – even most – social medianites do is the same thing they did 25 years ago with AOL: forget about the internet. To them, Facebook is their only connection to the web. Example: “Hey, everybody. Who shoots weddings in the Memphis area?” If you do this, here’s a magic trick: type that sentence into a search engine.

Also, fearfuls, when I give you a URL, which looks like http://www.youareanidiot.org/ , please, please don’t type or copy that into a search engine. It makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing.

I had someone on the phone once and we were trying to figure out a web problem when I asked him to take a screen shot. I heard fumbling and clunking, then the sound of a camera  shutter, then the clatter of finding a card reader, then… yes, he was taking a picture of his screen with a camera. Dude, Alt + PrtScn. I learned the Mac OS shortcut, Shift-Command (⌘)-3, to take a screen shot, while I was taking my first one out of its box.

This whole mess of skillessness is exemplified and amplified by the “Age of Apps,” in which our devices will allow us to use the internet with virtually zero effort with a few taps or strokes in the built-in web browsers or every phone, tablet, desktop or laptop on the planet, but instead we access that very same information by downloading, installing, and sometimes even buying, an “app,” which an ever-thinning slice of the public knowledge pie even seems to remember is short for “application,” which itself is computerspeak for a computer program.

The most troubling aspect of all about this kind of willful ignorance is that people who are happy to be phone-gawking gastropods are also likely to be led by the nose into social and political slavery.

It would surprise me if 10% of the people who see this link on social media click it, and 10% of those who who clicked read this far into it. (If you did {Wil C. Fry for one} read this deep, include “I am 10% of 10%” with your comment to prove it.

So, back to Facebook. Don’t get hung up on Facebook having or selling your “personal” information unless it’s really personal. Facebook is very welcome to know that I like coffee. They are very NOT welcome to know what we do in the bedroom, or what prescription medications I take. And they don’t, because I don’t tell them, mostly by not surfing or searching Facebook for things like that.

Okay, maybe you have tape on your webcam. In that case, the internet might not be the place for you.

Finally, I am experiencing a personal renaissance in writing my thoughts and ideas by hand on paper, and that never gets old. I highly recommend it.