What's not to Like? Well...

I've finally joined Facebook. It's as unfriendly as I expected.

I’ve finally done it. After years of resistance, and against every one of my socially distanced instincts, I have at last succumbed. I am, it would seem, on Facebook.

It’s not really my choice. In truth, I have been corralled, kicking and screaming. I am here only because my wife kept telling me that as she, our son and I are all self-employed, it is an invaluable tool in promoting all three of our businesses. So I am reluctantly trying it. And as if keeping up its side of an unspoken Faustian bargain, I see it’s already trying me.

Around 53 million people in the UK use Facebook, according to its newly renamed parent company Meta. I find this unbelievable – literally, as in I actually don’t believe it. The number of British residents old enough (13-plus) to have an account is 55 million. If Meta’s claim is true, 97.2% of us are using its platform, which means just about every Brit who can read and write is doing so on Facebook. More of us have an account than own a passport, drink tea, eat meat or even watch television. Really?

And now I have joined them. And, honestly, I still can’t see the appeal. My reasons for not joining earlier were that I had perceived Facebook to be full of vacuous narcissists sharing self-important opinions and the humdrum details of their lives with a world that frankly doesn’t care, and it wouldn’t interest me.

But having given it two or three weeks, my head has been turned, and I concede now that it seems to be only largely full of vacuous narcissists sharing self-important opinions and the humdrum details of their lives with a world that frankly doesn’t care, and it doesn’t interest me.

(Be assured that the irony of using my blog to sneer at people spouting unsolicited self-important opinions is not lost on me.)

I’m not, you’ll gather, a social person. I have some glorious friends whom I love deeply, and whose company I always cherish and savour. Yet these are few, select, carefully chosen relationships honed over years. They are my friends because they are warm, dependable, reliable, non-judgmental, drop-everything helpful. I’ve therefore had to adjust quickly to the notion of Facebook friends, which form a much wider, less exclusive group of vague, disparate associates. And that when someone wants you as a Facebook friend, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all.

With enemies like this, who needs friends?

One of my most startling discoveries about Facebook is the number of friendship requests from people I’d consigned to my personal history, who seep up through the floorboards wanting to reconnect with me. The six degrees of separation theory has seen names from my personal and professional past loom into view as “friend suggestions”, people I at best learned or worked with because I had no choice, and at worst whom I loathed, people whose appearance on my phone screen after all these years rises in me decades-latent emotions of upset, bitterness, anger I suffered when we last met. Naturally, I’ve ignored these suggestions that I reach out, but it’s more alarming when I get a friend request from one of them, people who blithely think 30-year-old resentments can be swept away in an instant by me clicking “accept”.

However, because I’m unfamiliar with the etiquette, I found myself accepting a few friendship requests I didn’t want. Not my loathsome enemies, but just old acquaintances who, you know, were nice enough but if I’d had any interest in getting in touch, I’d have done so years ago by means other than Facebook. I’ve since learned what everyone else knows, that I can “unfriend” them and likely do it discreetly without them knowing. This is because I’ve also learned that if they have reached out to rekindle such a mutually ambivalent non-relationship, to the I’m probably just one of hundreds of similarly meaningless Facebook friends. Some old associates I’ve naively agreed to befriend (befriend? Friend? I still don’t know the jargon) have, I’ve subsequently discovered, 2,000 Facebook friends. I, on the other hand, have only 60, and 40 of them are family. (And many of them I’m not interested in, but family connections mean if you’re friends with some and not others, questions are asked.) That’s quite enough. Why do I need any more?

I find I'm scrolling to hit the jackpot

But the one problem with all of this, the idea that I’m controlling Facebook, it’s not controlling me, is that I still feel myself sucked in. No, I’m not interested in the “Stories”, the “Reels”, certainly not the sponsored content, the “hilarious” viral videos, and not even in most of the posts created by even my closest, genuine friends. I love them and all but their private lives are not my business. Yet, every now and again (evidence so far suggests about once every five days) someone puts something on that piques my interest. Every now and again I’ll see something, a random post that pops up from out of the ether and makes me react, want to comment. It’s enough, like the once every 400-spin jackpot on a fruit machine, to make me scroll through pages and pages in the hope that I’ll get a reward of something that interesting again. My resistance is in danger of slipping. I hate it and yet I’m bizarrely drawn to it.

And because I have allowed myself to react, and posted a few comments, I’ve already been “trolled” or “schooled” or whatever it is, when my innocuous remark got me ridiculed and patronised. I’ve been pleased to learn, especially having seen others’ desperation for “likes”, that that level of validation doesn’t interest me. I’m much too old to be bothered whether you agree or not, whether you “like” my comment or not. Genuinely. What I do object to is the extremeness of the aggression in people who don’t agree. God knows how people in the public eye, or people susceptible to low mood and mental illness, deal with the sheer vitriol and volume of such negativity. Sadly, as we learn all too regularly, many don’t. Being a sensitive soul, I was quite shocked and hurt by the strident, bullying tone and my gut reaction was to hit back – but I resisted it because I could see how doing so would have attracted derision and abuse. So I didn’t give them the satisfaction of a reply – instead I withdrew from the conversation immediately. As with my friend selection, it’s a mechanism that works for me in real life.

Based on all of the above, I’m guessing this is unlikely to be the start of a great love affair with Facebook. I get that if you’re garrulous, sociable, thick-skinned, love a group conversation and being surrounded by clamour, it’s a great way to communicate.

I, though, tend to be insular and private and am happy with my handful of real-life, genuine friends. For the reasons I stated of professional expediency, I will stay on it for now. But I make no promises for the future.

I’m happier with my own friends, thanks. Theirs are the opinions that most matter. And I know they like me, whatever.

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