christopherjamesstone

What did I used to do before Facebook?

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OK, I have a confession to make: I’m a Facebook addict.

It’s true. I just can’t keep away from it.

The trouble with Facebook is that it feels like you are doing something, even though you’re not.

You’re always busy: checking your updates, sticking up posts, answering messages, replying to other people’s comments, engaging in debate, friending people, unfriending people.

Sometimes it makes me wonder what I used to do before there was Facebook. I’m sure I filled my time up with other things, I just can’t remember what those things were. I spent the first forty years of my life without a computer.

Even when I did get a computer, I was still able to do without Facebook for another ten years or more.

I can’t remember when I first signed up to it. Probably around eight years ago. Facebook will know. It knows everything about me. I do remember when it evolved into a tool for my writing. This was during the riots in 2011. I collected a lot of material in the space of a week, and, at the end of it, turned it into a story.

It felt really good, and I was pleased with the results. How modern I was: a sixty year old man using Facebook to write stories. Since then, unfortunately, it’s been deliberately sabotaged.

Facebook was floated on the stock market in 2012. That’s when it stopped being a social network site and became a way of making money for its shareholders.

Your posts no longer have the same reach they used to. You are probably only being connected to about 5% of your contacts at any one time. You have to pay Facebook to get your posts “promoted”.

It’s like they’ve sold you a car and then put a hole in the petrol tank. The idea is that you’ll buy more fuel. Only you don’t. You just don’t go anywhere any more.

The Arab Spring was organised through Facebook. That couldn’t happen these days.

Which is probably another good reason why Facebook was hobbled.

What wise ruler would allow the people a tool by which they can organise his overthrow?

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The Whitstable Gazette.
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Published by christopherjamesstone

CJ Stone is an author, columnist and feature writer. He has written six books: Fierce Dancing: Adventures in the Underground (Faber & Faber 1996); The Last of the Hippies (Faber & Faber 1999); Housing Benefit Hill & Other Places (AK Press 2001); The Trials of Arthur (with Arthur Pendragon: Thorsons/Element 2003); The Trials of Arthur Revised Edition (with Arthur Pendragon: The Big Hand 2010); & The Empire of Things (Gonzo multimedia 2013). He is currently working on his seventh. From 1993 till 1998 he was a regular columnist with the Guardian Weekend in the UK. His column Housing Benefit Hill was a runaway hit, observing life on a run down housing estate in a small town in England, while his travel column CJ Stone's Britain took a wry look at the state of Britain in the 90s. From 2003-2008, he ran a column for Prediction magazine. Other columns include a fortnightly column for The Whitstable Times and columns for Mixmag & the Big Issue. Currently he writes a fortnightly column for The Whitstable Gazette and makes regular contributions to the Guardian on-line, the London Review of Books and Kindred Spirit magazine.

6 comments

  2. I am a SLAVE to Facebook! I need some help! Like crack cocain, only legal. Loved your account and can identify with all you write. Thank you.

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