Note: Essay below was copy and pasted from a post on Facebook I wrote on Feb 5, 2025, before I was laid off from Meta. After working at Meta for 4 1/2 years and using Facebook since 2005, it was a tough moment for me, especially now that I had plenty of free time to ponder how we got into this situation. By this point, I had been watching the National Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 for ~9 months and had been convinced we are heading for an authoritarian government for ~3 months. I was just utterly shocked at how we were watching the rise of Fascism in real time and how few seemed to notice or take the threat seriously. My feelings, thoughts, and values coalesced into the following essay.
My time on Facebook is drawing to a close. I am scheduled to be laid off by Meta next Monday (2/10), and I intend to deactivate my Meta accounts after that. I feel betrayed by Meta & Facebook, honestly. I joined Facebook in 2005 when WVU Tech students were able to create accounts. And I have been a big user of Facebook since. Granted, I don’t post much, but I have enjoyed watching you all from the shadows, occasionally emerging to provide support from afar. I suspect I’ll lose touch with a lot of you, but hopefully we find each other on less toxic platforms.
I keep a lot of my core beliefs to myself because I felt deeply misunderstood and maligned as a teenager for the crime of being born different. I’ve been finally doing the work to help that poor boy heal. Perhaps sharing my point of view will help him heal. So I’ve decided to write a series of long form posts expressing many things I’ve wanted to say over the years, but have held back for one reason or another.
I want to start with humanity as a whole. I have always been fascinated by human nature. By ourselves, we are nothing special. A smart, weak ape. A single person versus a tiger is a laughable match-up. But together, we have a super power that no other species on the planet has: flexible cooperation. Many mammals can inflexibly cooperate by living and hunting in small numbered groups (or packs). Ants, bees, and other insects have swarm behaviors encoded in their DNA. But none of them can redefine the parameters of their cooperation. Humans can.
How do we do that? Shared fiction. There is no such thing as the United States; it is an abstract idea that only has power because we have decided it does. There is no such thing as a government. Counties, states, laws, statutes are all imaginary things. You cannot touch a Religion. You cannot taste a Philosophy. But we all behave as if the things we believe are real.
In Sociology 101, I remember hearing a phrase that forever changed my view of the world. “Things defined as real are real in their consequences.” It’s such a simple idea, but it really is the underpinning of all human civilization. Bureaucracy (as inefficient as it can be) is the engine of human cooperation. Without it, we’d be stuck in small tribes like apes. Forever following the social dynamics encoded in our DNA.
But what happens when bad faith actors can shape our reality? After all, we are very limited in what we can physically observe ourselves. Someone has to tell us what is happening elsewhere. And what if the organizations we are used to depending on for remote truth start to lie? Then we begin living in a false reality.
On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in the District of Columbia, and fired three shots from an AR-15 style rifle that struck the restaurant’s walls, a desk, and a door. Welch later told police that he had planned to investigate the Democrat led Pedophilia Ring. He had read that Democrats had been sex trafficking children and using the basement of the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant to house the victims. This was a lie. In fact, the restaurant had no basement. But, Welch believed it was true and acted as if it were. He didn’t hurt anyone, but he could have easily. Lies can kill. (From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory)
The internet has been an amazing communication tool, but we are not equipped as a species to operate it responsibly. It has this magnificent power to amplify small voices. This in itself is not bad. It’s what allowed the gay rights movement to go from the horrific death of Matthew Shepard in 1998 to federal recognition of gay marriage in 2015. We queer people could find each other and organize. But it has also allowed the likes of Andrew Tate to find a dedicated group of followers who buy into the idea that males must be aggressive, must subjugate others, and that kindness is the ultimate weakness. Might makes right. The sin of empathy, indeed.
While these cults of personality are bad enough, the worst part is that it also allows falsehoods to flourish. Unfortunately, the general populace (at least in the US) does not have the necessary education and critical thinking skills to determine what is true and what is false. A well placed lie can cause others to take out your enemies without you firing a shot. And you have plausible deniability. “I didn’t tell anyone to go hunting them down. I was just asking questions!” You can incite an insurrection in plain daylight and then back away saying you did nothing but speak. Stand by and stand back.
This brings us to Facebook. In the 2016 election, Cambridge Analytica was found to be guilty of harvesting personal data from Facebook to target people with political ads (without consent). They were found to be using this unauthorized collection of data to aid the Trump campaign. And of course, we know he won. Despite never ever holding office. Despite espousing some of the most anti-american sentiments. Despite numerous sexual assault allegations. Despite a history of fraud and failed businesses. Trump was able to win precisely because he was so flawed. Enumerating all of the reasons why he shouldn’t be president started to look like hyperbole. Besides, he was on the Apprentice! And, some people liked the things he was saying. The gist of it is: Too Long; Didn’t Read. The stronger the case he shouldn’t be president, the more qualified his supporters think he is.
(As an aside, Facebook was also heavily implicated in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar in 2017. From PBS: https://www.pbs.org/…/amnesty-report-finds-facebook…)
I remember the day after the election in 2016. I went to sleep when the election was still undecided and woke up with Trump as the president-elect. New York was especially somber that day. People on the subway and the streets had a thousand yard stare. Meetings at work started with “wtf just happened” and then quickly devolved into a Bernie versus Hillary debate. Part of me thinks we could have avoided the fall of the US if the democrats would have just run with Bernie Sanders.
Facebook created many programs to combat misinformation in the wake of the 2016 election. But they’re all gone now. Zuck wants more free speech. Zuck wants more debate. Zuck wants more masculine energy. What does this really mean? Zuck has bent the knee to trump in exchange for joining the tech oligarchy that controls the US. I cannot and will not be a part of supporting such a company or such an individual as Zuckerberg. I will not willingly be a part of the GOP propaganda machine. I can only hope that in 50 years or so when the dust settles, Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel, Bezos, etc are remembered as enemies of humanity. Assuming we live that long.
We are on track to be the first species to go extinct because it wasn’t economically viable to save ourselves. Making our world better does not increase short term profits. Doing good in the world does not show up on your quarterly review. We’d rather poison the Earth for future generations than curtail our consumption even a little. Our DNA creates within us an instinct to birth more humans into this world and then our societal narratives expect them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Save the fetus at all costs, yes, but then who cares after they are born. They might grow up to be trans, after all.
We are selfish. We are destructive. We are ignorant. One thing I am thankful for is that it seems we will wipe ourselves out before we become a true space faring species. I’d hate to unleash the evil that we are capable of upon the universe. If the Christian God were real, I suspect he’d throw us ALL into the lake of fire.
We deserve it.
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