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Tuesday, July 26

Please. Stop. Thanks.

Facebook use to be such a fun playground.  When I joined in June '09, it was such a healthy place to interact with my fellow cyclists.  Keeping in touch with friends who are far away IRL and making contacts with new people.  People whom I might one day have the pleasure of their company on a bike ride someday.  I also found it a great place for blog fodder, inspiration... a publicly sourced muse.  My "friends" really knew what I needed to know (or at least mock).  Without Facebook, I don't get things like this image of my former PMBAR partner, Jody, fondling a tire like a sexy, bike-curious lumberjack:

Gold, Jerry.

But recently...

I know that scrolling through my feed is a huge time suck to begin with.  When I'm busy having fun with friends IRL, I barely bother to look at it.  Mostly, I'm checking what I've been tagged in to see if it's an Oakley ad or an image of someone's balls (also gold, Jerry).

At work tho, I need something to do between runs/deliveries.  Something I can walk away from as soon as there is work to do.  Hard to be focused (read a book) or productive (knit a sweater) in this scenario.  Not to mention, I still enjoy playing with my little friends, and I do still manage to get some blog fodder out of it.  Yesterday's topic just happened to be one of the first things I saw pop up on my feed yesterday morning.

So anyways...

With all the ugly things going on right now with our political system, my Facewall is being inundated with stupidity... that I, immersed in this stupidity, allow myself to intellectually drown in quite voluntarily.   Impulse control not being my strong suit, I click the links.  Skim.  Check the source.  Seek out bias.  Decide whether or not it's leaning left or right.  It's rarely balanced.  So why did I bother?  Nothing I read makes me feel better about the world.

Anal compulsion.  Rubber necking.  Lemming mentality.

It only takes a slight push to get me to go down the dark hallway.  Problem being, go down the hall deep enough and I have a hard time looking back and seeing the way out.  Insane.  I've even found myself watching the evening network news (no cable, so that's what I got).

What am I doing watching this instead of doing something (anything) else?

Being informed is not a terrible thing.  I encourage it, to the degree that you can either actively participate in making a change or at least say to yourself, "Wow, this is shitty/awesome," and then go about your day knowing you are less than a speck of dust in the universe.  From now on, I'm going to do my best to either seek out my news when I want it in my life or go back to catching up on the world by watching Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update.  Maybe enjoy the indulgence of watching a little John Oliver from time to time.


I realize even these sources may lean more in one direction than the other, but at least I'll be laughing while the world burns instead of hiding under a sheet like I would be if I only watched FOX News (which is equally entertaining, if you enjoy things like pulling the wings off a fly).

Yesterday, I found it quite easy to scroll past the fear mongering and associated bullshit.  I realize I could just block people who keep posting all this inane bullshit without checking their sources, but most of my Facefriends ride bikes, and honestly, I'd probably enjoy their company... as long as we don't talk politics... which people tend to not do as much in person as they do online.

So yeah.

Keep posting all those links.  Just please make sure the image and/or link easily identifies your post as political, so I can scroll past it to get to the bike-related posts easier.

And posts that reaffirm my lifestyle, such as drinking beer on a Sunday at 11:50AM because you're washing your bike.  And cute animal videos.  Keep them a'coming.  I love baby goats, FYI.  Who doesn't?

BTW: If anyone knows how to block posts with the words "Trump, Clinton, Republican, Democrat, election, and recipe," feel free to reach out to me.  It's either that or I'm going to start a social media site where we just talk about/make fun of bike related topics.  Some perfect virtual world where the most polarizing topics will be dropper posts, fat bikes, and cyclocross.

Mostly fat bikes tho.

Because they're terrible.

10 comments:

Eric Wever said...

tl;dr

dicky said...

Thanks for scrolling down to the bottom tho.

Anonymous said...

Is this really about that new crabon Guacamole semi fat bike with the drunken chain stays? -Metro

Moe said...

If scrolling the book of faces on a PC with a browser such as Chrome, you can add filters and such to block political posts and any other key word posts that you don't want to see on your facebook feed. I'm guessing just blocking two words (Trump and Hillary) would reduce the shit I see by 50% on my FB feed. A quick google search will give you some insight on what to do. The problem is if using the FB app. I don't know of anything for that to do what you are looking to do.

Moe said...

Here is the link to how to add filters to your browser on your cpu.

https://www.gottabemobile.com/2016/06/17/how-to-stop-political-posts-facebook-election-2016/

Anonymous said...

"Fat" bikes is politically incorrect.

Anonymous said...

I am so confused. I just just go by trans-racial gender neutral.

dicky said...

BTW: I can't change settings on our browser at work, as it is a shared computer. Some people want to politic at work, I guess.

Burt Friggin' Hoovis said...

My grandfather used to bitch about TV you know.

Just sayin'

Thanks,
Burt

Scoutrider said...

De-activated my Faceless Book account back in Feb... have not had the desire to go back. It's like opening the refrigerator; not much has changed since the last time you opened it (except maybe stuff has gotten older, moldier, etc...)