The Evolution of the Internet, or, How I Gave Up Facebook and Got My Life Back

Fuck Facecrook

Once upon a time, there was an internet addiction.

Internet addiction is something we don't talk about anymore, being that everyone has a smartphone and chooses to look down at it and play as opposed to smiling, meeting the eyes of strangers, of forcing oneself to speak in awkward situations. Think about it: how much do you use the internet, text messaging, facebook, every day? I'm willing to bet it's a fucking boatload. I know it's a fucking boatload. I gave it up.

I've been on the internet since 1996, when I was 13 years old. Back then we had Usenet to be social and web hosting sites like Geocities, Tripod and Angelfire to build profiles for ourselves and link them in out Usenet signatures so that people may see grainy scanned pictures of us and a list of favorite bands, books, movies, and other randomness. Out of that grew fansites - those who became savvy of the html language would build websites, basically shrines, to those whom they obsessed over on Usenet. My own biggest haunt was alt.fan.conan.obrien and my shrine to hime became so big that I signed contracts with NBC at the ripe old age of 16 and ran an official "fan network" site for them. (here. here's the page. shut up.) Yes, I was obsessed with Conan waaaaaaaay back before he became a hipster favorite, and way before that sexy, sexy beard.

Eventually, Conan O'Brien on the internet consumed my life and I ducked away, realizing that I was getting nowhere. Now of course I regret that, wishing I could be part of the amazing Team CoCo, but hey. Can't live in the past.

Then came blogs. I had one, everyone did. Back then blogs were more diaries than news or entertainment, and it was thrilling to get a glance into the everyday lives of people you had never met, never will meet, don't particularly even care about. And it's thrilling to have people come from all over the world to see you, complimenting your graphics, your code, your opinions, your writing style. I became stuck on the blog, updating daily the most intimate details of my life, until I realized that was dumb and backed off, once again.

Then... came social networking.

I never did Friendster. I saw it as ruining the 'net for what it was - and intricate web of intelligent people sharing everything with each other - because it was user friendly and invited everyone else in. But then, THEN came MySpace, everyone on the planet was on it, and in 2005, I signed on to spy on my employees talking shit about me in a group they'd created for the restaurant we worked in.

I became obsessed, once again.

We all know the story. MySpace eventually graduated to facebook. Nobody can really say how it happened, it just sort of... did. And I became VERY obsessed with facebook. Not with friending, like some people, but with Pages, with Fans, with Likes, and, most of all, the Illusion.

What's the Illusion, you ask? Why, you know very well what it is. It's the little embelishments you add on to your posts to get people to comment or like it. It's the life you build for yourself and present to these people whom you "know" but never see, and who in all actuality could not give less of a fuck about what you made for dinner. It's posting about how dinner came out amazing, and everyone ate every bite, yum yum, and six or seven people "like" that and a friend comments "yay, way to go" and you sit on the computer and wait for this because that's why you posted it in the first place. It's getting angry at someone who says "so what, you cooked dinner, big fuckin' deal?" and unfriending them, deep in the Illusion that such a thing should matter. It's your other friends gathering around you and morally supporting you when you announce the unfriending, because what a bitch, why say such a thing, how could she?

This is, of course, a broad scenario. replace "dinner" with, essentially, any situation and you get the heart of facebook. And those who become obessesed get bored with this and turn to Pages. Arguing with strangers, getting yourself in trouble. I lost a job once because of a local gossip page. on Pages you get all walks of life - and all of them willing to fight. That old flame war adage (this has been around for a LONG time) "Arguing on the internet is like running at the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded" is tasteless, offensive, and, well, true. People back arguments by information they find on Google and Wikipedia, not by using their heads. The obsessed, like me, eventually become bored with that, and seek power: a Page of their own.

I went as far. I started a comedy page of my own and was mildly successful, with a total of about 30,000 fans. Then I convince a group of friends of mine to start a page with me, and it took off overnight, we were hugely successful, and although the Page belonged to me and seven other women, I spent pretty much all of my time getting new fans and catering to the Illusion, this life on the internet. Things went kind of bad for me, in my life, and a big, big chunk of it unfolded on facebook. Embellished, of course.

I gave up facebook, one of the hardest things I have ever done, and things immediately began to calm. Instead of spending my days checking, reading, and updating my facebook and my Pages, I spend my days cleaning, cooking, playing with my son, enjoying time with my husband, even BAKING for fuck's sake. I'm very happy to do it.

You can only go so far when something is holding you back. Find that thing, and you will be better. For me? It was the internet. I spent so much time obsessing over the little world I created on facebook that I forgot about the bigger picture - and now, with it gone, I have no choice but to be happy. Funny how that works, huh?

If you are reading this, and you feel like your life is closing in around you, and you don't know how to get out, pick the one thing you spend most of your time on and DUMP IT. Get rid of it. Odds are that thing is hurting you, even though it may be (and I've heard people describe facebook and such like this, even myself) "all you have" you will soon discover that without whatever that thing occupying your life is was all you had because you made it that way. Do you have kids, a lover, a home, dinner to cook? Dishes to do? Do that instead, and enjoy life. Not your obsessions.

If that "thing" is facebook? You don't have nearly as many friends as you thought you did, and even fewer people who are willing to pick up a phone or even shoot an email your way. Facebook friendships are friendships of convenience, nothing more. Just like your life on facebook is just what you make it, nothing more. I, for one, shout to the world, ENCOURAGE people to give up that facade. Take a step out, blink, see the world for what it really is, and your relationships for what they are. You don't have 300 friends. You have maybe 2 or 3 who would call you if you didn't have a facebook.

Now I'm simply writing a children's book for my son, attempting to illustrate it. Something I never thought I would be able to do.

I still, of course, love the internet. It's a powerful tool and a fun place, but I, like any addict, must learn to take it in moderation. And facebook? Well, it's been 4 months, and I do miss it. I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of things - pregnant friends, marriages, pictures... but I remain strong. I won't go back. Occasionally I still log in on my husbands profile, check out my old page, peek at people's lives, but mostly it makes me sad, that I got so deep in the Illusion, and how deep some of the people I love are in it. I've become a black sheep, ostracized by my lack of social sharing and thumbs up. If you choose to give up facebook, you will find that the people still on it, and especially those ones deep, deep in the Illusion, might even be aggressive toward you, defensive, as is facebook is theirs and theirs alone and you giving it up insults them. When you run into those people, tell them to go hug their kid or do the dishes, put down their phone and smile at a stranger, take a chance on getting lost and, for fucks sake, nobody cares that you made dinner.

I Think I Might Love Him, Too.

My husband is a wonderful man. He's funny, caring and kind. He loves life and believes wholeheartedly in the general goodness of people. He rescued me from the depths of Hell, and I him.

When I met my husband, I was a miserable, sad thing. Depressed, not intending to go on with life much longer, absolutely sure that the world was this awful, hateful place and would never accept me. (Oh, to be Fat In America. It's like a fucking crime to some people.) I was 24 years old and sure that my life was meaningless. 

Just after Christmas 2006, I was working overnights as a cashier at the local Wal-Mart. A co-worker came through my line with her husband, and a man who worked for her husband. The man was cashing his paycheck, buying a few small things, and had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. He was also scruffy, with a full beard and a ponytail. He complimented me on my M*A*S*H T-shirt, saying he loved the show, too. My co-worker stood behind him, wide-eyed, and made happy gestures at this man. When he wasn't looking I gave a shake of my head. "Not into the homeless look." I told her later. Really, though, it was just the ol' conscience being sure of what a loser I really was. 

She didn't care, and decided that me and this guy were both coming to her house for new years eve. It was a set-up, through and through, and it worked like a charm. We talked all through the night, and then for three days after that. He was living in his friends garage, so he came over to my apartment. And stayed. As simple as that, we fell in love. 

My husband was addicted to crystal meth when he met me. I didn't know that. He spoke of drugs a little sometime in the first few days, and I told him simply that I do not do, or like to be around, that "drug shit." He told me he only did it once a month or so. Not too much later he confessed that that had been a lie, and he'd been a full-fledged addict for seven years. (He was 23. He started when he was 16.) Later still, he told me that he did it one time about a week after he met me, and felt so guilty he never touched it again. Just like that. Cold turkey. Love can do amazing things for the human body. 

We knew we were in love pretty quick, but it took 21 long days for him to say it. I wasn't about to say it first! We were laying in my bed, and he told me that he had called his mother earlier that day and... dot dot dot... "I think I might love you." 

I responded, quick as a bunny, that I think I might love him, too. Later, he confessed to me that the only reason he'd called his mother that day was to tell her he was in love, for real. No "I think I might" about it. 

He proposed to me on April 22nd, 2007. We were married on December 31st, 2007. Yeah, we got married on New Years Eve because we met on New Years Eve. It was too cute not to do it. 

Now, four and a half years later, we are just as in love. We have a beautiful son who is about to turn 3. He's been clean of drugs for four and a half years. We were both lost, alone, and searching for something we thought we would never find, and that fateful night, we found each other. We are happy together, and getting happier by the minute as we make our way through this stinking mud pit called life. He taught me the most important thing I will ever learn - true happiness is letting go. 

So happy Fathers Day, my love. I may have given you an awesome shirt and the best chair ever today, but you gave me a life. 

I love him. 

our song. (unconventional, i know.)

I have been asked, on many occasions, how I keep my sense of humor.

Living a life such as mine, many people might have had trouble. I haven't had the worst life ever, by any means. Much worse stories have have been told, throughout all of history. Mine, though, is my own, and here is a part of it.

This time of year blows. Most people, they love this time of year. The beginning of summer, warm weather, end of school, lots of fun. Me? I get depressed.

My mother was born June 14th, 1951. Yeah, that date just passed. She would have been 60 this year. I say "would have," because she died on November 3rd, 1997, at all of 46 years old. Taken by breast cancer after only a four year battle, the odds were against her. She got it at a young age. She discovered it when it was in Stage Four. She went into remission after the first round of chemo and radiation, but it came back with a vengence, all over her body, in the end. The doctors told us (and I, all of fifteen years old.) that there were so many tumors in her brain they did not even bother to count them. She went insane in the end, quite literally. Or maybe she was the most clear she'd even been in her life, who knows. She said she talked to God, and he spoke back to her. Funny, because she had never believed in God. I don't believe she was an athiest, I think she was like me. Just unable to accept that anyone knew what the fuck they were talking about.

My mother was cool. She was 16 years old in The Summer Of Love, graduated and turned 18 in 1969. She was a hippie. She did a lot of drugs. She had 6 kids. Four before me, then she divorced their father and married mine. She had one kid after me, whom she gave up for adoption. I found my sister on MySpace a few years back. I'll tell the story some day. And... she did a lot of drugs. She kind of always did, while she was pregnant, raising kids, dying. She wanted to be more a friend to me than a mother. This was a problem because, well, I had my own personality. My mother? Was not the type of person I was friends with. So we didn't get along so well. I loved her, and I was devestated when she died, and I still miss her, every single day. I've even forgiven all of the things she did to me in my childhood. I mean, I wouldn't be who I am if she hadn't. But really - having me sleep in the backseat of the car whe I'm 6 while you and your boyfriend go get drunk in the bar? Those were different times, I suppose. It took becoming a mother myself to forgive my mother her sins. Not because I understand them, but because I simply wish I had her here, with me, helping me be a mom.

My father, on the other hand, was only 28 when he died. The age I am now. I have officially lived longer than my own father already. I was 4 when he passed. Old enough to understand, old enough to miss him, and old enough that it still devestates me. He was ill as a teenager, and the illness caused kidney damage. The kidney damage went on and on - he even got a new one from his mother, my Grandmother. That failed too. All the kidney failure also caused his heart to fail. In 1987, when he died, he was to be one of the first in the nation to recieve a simultanious heart-and-kidney transplant. He died near the top of the list.

My father was also cool, and a lady killer. He was married 2 times before he met my mother, and was only 23 when he met her. He had another kid before me, my brother, whom I've never met. But guess what? He found me on MySpace a few years ago. (Yeah. That's gonna be a hell of a story when I tell it.) Anyway, from what I know about my father, I got his personality. He loved music and comedy, loved to joke and laugh, loved everyone and everything and life, even though he started dying when he was a teenager. He gave and gave and gave, and never expected anything back. In the end, a few people called him selfish, because he stopped sticking to his strict diet, stopped not doing all those things that were supposed to keep him "alive." But really, there is a huge difference between being alive and living, and my father chose to live. Perhaps that shortened his life a little, but probably not much, and he died a happy man.

So this time of year, this time when Flag Day, also known as my mother's birthday, and Fathers Day manage to be REALLY FUCKING CLOSE TOGETHER, I get a little bummed out. I think a lot about my own mortality when I think about my parents. They lived to an average age of 37, so that is when I expect to die. I've lived longer than my father, but damned if I don't have kidney problems. I have no money, I just wish I had someone whose doorstep I could show up on with my little family and KNOW we would have a roof over our heads and food in our belly's.

I don't think like this all the time. In fact, very rarely. Just when the calender forces me to.

Dude. Fuck calenders.

1. I am going to focus on my husband this fathers day, and not what I do not have
2. Even without your mother, there are plenty of Mother-Figures out there.
3. A baby is born with a need to be loved and never outgrows it. -Frank A. Clark

This was my moms favorite song.