As the sun sets on another terrain-unobstructed Iowan landscape, I came upon a profound realization. It’s been nearly one month since I’ve expressed a non-analytical creative thought for public consumption (all the analytical ones are here).
Sometime earlier this summer, Facebook made a server update severely sever one of my final tender links with them. They implemented an integration update that only allowed auto-posting for Pages but not for profiles.
If you are an undying fan of my personal life (which Facebook implies we all need for social wellness), you probably noticed my lack of personal updates through Facebook the past few years. I never expressed a “I had the most OKAY spinach leek dip EVER at Mortimer’s party last fortnight!” and mostly shared ideas like “Organic juice cleanses purge your digestive system AND your wallet!”
Since I like an uncluttered life, I auto-posted my random inanities with Buffer and Hootsuite. Facebook’s update, along with one of the most retarded arguments I’ve had in a while about the #metoo movement on May 12th, was the last California straw.
Social networks distinguish themselves by the nature of their media. Tumblr engineers itself as bite-sized blog posts. Twitter revolves around ideas and responses to ideas. Pinterest revolves around ideas encapsulated in photos. Snapchat is a secretly archived quickly deleted messaging service. Reddit is…something.
Unfortunately, the Facebook/Instagram behemoth revolves around people. Sadly, the average person doesn’t have many interesting things to say. I blame a lack of literacy mixed with poor decisions for consumption, but however it develops most frequent Facebook posters seem to love talking about things nobody else cares about.
Even though taking photos of your lunch has fallen out of style, the mass-production of habitually publishing pettiness has moved its domain to Facebook. If you’ve ever seen a Facebook ad, you’ll likely see the type of demographic they aim for, and it’s an exercise in tedium to sift through the silly and boring content to find out what people are actually doing with their lives.
In some ways, Facebook has set a new paradigm. If you don’t desire to stay in touch with others, you can always watch what they do on Facebook. Sadly, so many people are fearful of change that I find Facebook depressing when it doesn’t bore me.
Individual people must adapt their lifestyle to accommodate how trends change. My Tamagotchi died, I did not catch ’em all, my music player isn’t a separate device from my cell phone, and I’m now numbered among Facebook users that almost never post.
I have a theory that the reason we don’t like to start a change is because it pulls on a carpet thread of associated ideas that can radically redefine our worldview. In turn, the more changes we see the more we’re likely to change, which forces other changes to create a sense of equilibrium.
My emigration from Facebook has merged with adapting to Iowan life and fun changes from our little Honeydew. My Gluey Sniffers and I have been raising Cantaloupe for over a year now, and it now knows how to gesture and make poor attempts at human language. It imitates us and sees all.
Since we’re in the Changemas Spirit, Gummy Droppers and I are redefining our lives as well. The conventional lifestyle of an apartment suite a mile from a fantastic job with room to grow a family and a connection into a healthy Christian community confuses us, to say the least. We’ve been so accustomed to abnormal lifestyles ranging from living in cars to RV’s to strange roommates that doing what normal people do feels pedestrian by comparison.
If you’ve grown accustomed to change long enough, you’ll find a lack of change discomforting. Success may require changing, but when taken too far the love of great change can compromise one’s ability to appear normal, especially when surrounded by average change-adverse people. Since I’ve added Epsilon Theory to my list of Things To Read When I Can Remember To, attaining an image of normalcy is vital for our ability to succeed as a weird family.
Nevertheless, we press on in changing inwardly, which creates many fun opportunities to debase things we once held dear:
- My Woofy Mewers hates Vicky or Victoria or any other variation of the name outside of Tori, and therefore my Wifey Poo is now named Tori Stucky.
- Saying “if you can’t find who owns the cat, we’ll take care of her if you need” usually yields nothing, but we’ve gotten a friendly black cat out of it.
- I’ve come to realize that life’s glorious moments come in microscopic victories that nobody else sees. The outward moments that create awards, heroism, and recognition are merely byproducts of the small investments made when times were tough, life sucked overall, and things were stupider.
A Stucky Life 