I’ve been receiving lots of urgent emails. “Where are your stories on Facebook, Sean!?” one email reads.
“Sean, you’re not on Facebook, are you in a coma?!” “Sean! Our pills are guaranteed to enhance your love life, call today!”
People on Facebook have theories about where I’ve gone. Some are asking whether I am ill, whether I’m on vacation, or whether I am still, technically, alive.
Like this Facebook message:
“I recently heard Sean is not on Facebook because he is dead. I was heartbroken, is this true? Will someone please let us know if there is an estate sale?”
The truth is, I did not quit Facebook. I am in Facebook jail. This means that, among other things, whatever I post on Facebook is either deleted or suppressed so that only my uncle sees it.
It’s unclear why Facebook banned me, since I never talk politics, I don’t use foul language, and I do not post naked pictures very often.
But the truth is, since I was booted off Facebook, I’ve found enormous freedom without it. I still write every day, and I still share my work on my website and via email, but I feel less restrained.
I’ve been posting on Facebook every day since this column started 10 years ago. That’s 10 years of posts, never missing a day, like a clinically insane person.
What I didn’t realize was how the platform, over time, has molded me into its own image. Facebook trains its users with rewards and punishments. If you post something Facebook agrees with, the algorithm awards you with TONS of likes. It’s exactly like playing slot machines, only no free drinks.
This is why at one point hundreds of thousands of Facebook users started making videos of things they KNEW the algorithm would like. Things like cute puppies. Because it was a well-known fact that the Facebook algorithm once rewarded pictures of puppies. At one point, the dog-posts got so weird that mega-corporations began using puppies to advertise their products.
You’d be scrolling your newsfeed and you’d see dogs wearing Home Depot aprons, or drinking from Coca-Cola bottles, or purchasing life insurance, etc.
But God help you if you ever wrote something Facebook didn’t like. You were punished immediately. If you wrote, for example, about religion, they suppressed you. If you even mentioned the word “immigrant,” bye bye. Canadian wildfires? Suppression. If you typed the word Ukraine or Israel? See you later. If you referenced—even casually—a competing social media platform such as “TikTok,” game over.
And if you SO MUCH AS MENTION the Civil War, may heaven have mercy on your soul.
I once wrote a column about visiting Chickamauga National Park, where a pivotal Civil War battle was fought. A sacred place where thousands of Americans died. Within minutes, my post was removed, informing me that I was in violation of “community standards.”
Meantime, Facebook’s “community standards” allowed millions of video clips depicting an actual beheading to circulate newsfeeds.
Another instance—I am not making this up—I wrote a column during the pandemic about Santa Claus, visiting the children of the world. The column was promptly removed because of “false information.”
I could do this all day.
Once, I wrote about visiting the Coonhound Cemetery in Cherokee, Alabama, a place where over 300 hunters have buried their coonhounds. The post was removed. Facebook threatened to cancel my account because “coonhound” was considered “hate speech.”
And don’t even get me started on what Facebook did when I wrote about visiting Sugar Tit, South Carolina.
But today, I don’t have to worry about these things anymore. I can write freely, without worrying whether I’m going to offend the Facebook gods. I can be myself. I still refuse to talk politics, and I still do not use cuss words.
But I might show you some naked pictures of my dog.