I have just spent six months on Facebook.  It has been painful, but I’m stubborn.  Now I understand why it makes people fight. It’s simple.  You are shown ‘friends’ ‘likes’ against your will.  Problem is. Sometimes I ‘like’ posts I disagree with.  Encouragement and giving space to grow are attributes of actual (not simulated) friendship.  Facebook’s ‘Share’ is pointless.  Further you can’t respect or even note another’s point of interest without endorsing it to random friends who in turn may be hurt.

To less of a degree the same derisive formula applies to comments in your stream.  This is better because at least the words are the authors, but the framework of those comments is broken into tiny chunks at best.  Both a bibliographic and emotionally contextual nightmare of distortion.

How does this relate to Civgene?  Social nuance is destroyed.  It turns people’s empathy against them.  Making them regret kindnesses, curiosity and sharing their feelings.  That is prejudice inspiring insanity and I don’t respect or endorse it.  By detaching sincerity from each individuals context, growth is damaged, then retarded, then reversed.

If you understand both software and marketing you’d understand how deliberate this must be. Other social media only shares ‘shared’ media by default.  Further it is trivial for software authors add a checkbox to block others ‘likes’ or comments from your feed.  There used to be such a feature on Facebook and it was removed.  Requests to reinstate it were ignored.  The result?  Facebook is dividing people and making them fight, and they must be doing it intentionally.  I think this level of incompetence is impossible.

https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10202806006764439

If for some reason your extended family or a group of trusted friends is expecting you to participate in facebook I recommend spending some time studying narcissistic psychopaths.  Once the conscience is masked by facebooks technology, they lose access to subtlety of emotional expression. At first this impacts facebook relationships, reducing legitimate friendships to the lowest common denominator.  The subconscious mind is like a muscle so eventually it will atrophy.  Animal work alikes for human conscionable behaviours begin.  Essentially persistant visitors will become more psychopathic.  For sure more so than you would be on the level stable ground of consistent emotional context.

The good news is your conscience isn’t optional.  You have one or you don’t.  Since it is antifragile exercising it on other platforms should help you to spring back from being psychopathic. Abit in a 2d, low bandwidth text format saved from constant unintentional inference by emoticons and memes.  Anything based in text is still a narrow pipe.  Emote often.

From now on I’ll be treating Facebook how it treats others, a resource to be cultivated.  A contacts library of allies.  I have a group to tend to, and I’ll check for private messages from my contacts.  Folks who know me understand this is not just some anecdote.  One day I would be proud to play a role in replacing that pile of junk with something to free the people trapped there.  It’s destructive, and it makes me a little angry.

Here is how I will be handling it. Limited contact.  A familiar phrase to anyone who has coped with psychopaths.  Here is what meatspace friends should expect from my facebook facade.

• I treat all received emotion on Facebook like drunken babble
• I will only post material sourced from external sites.
• I will be posting primarily as a promotional tool.
• Don’t expect any interaction from me.  I reject their blinders to emotional nuance.
• Assume I will read nothing there.  I may look at, like or share something against my better judgement.  It’s random and means nothing to our relationship. Very possibly a calculated marketing action.
• Any ‘friends’ I have may not be someone I know or actually trust.
• I will now have ‘friends’ unknown to me.  This poses technical risks, as friends of friends have privileges.  They could be robots, super villains, law enforcement, wants stage psychopaths(aka:ASPD the ones that end up in jail for attempted murder), whatever.
• Please unfriend me if you don’t want all your candour public.  You have a day.  I won’t be offended.  Facebook owns the worst use of the word ‘friend’ ever.
• Check my links for other social media to interact.  I’ll keep it up to date.
• ‘Message’ me your private contact info (email, etc) if you think I don’t have it and want me to.
• Even if they did fix this, their intentions are suspect.  This can’t be idiocy.  It is very doubtful I would revert relaxation and revelry.

I recommend everyone treat facebook this way for their well being.  Please feel free to use this article to let your friends know, how and why you are treating facebook differently.  That you appreciate them more than facebook will let you.  That you will interact with them somewhere else, but not there.

I look forward to spending time with all my friends back in the real world.