I brought the lapcom back to the house with me yesterday, but I’m writing this on my smartphone even so.  Part of the reason for that is that the way I have to sit in the train to use the lapcom can sometimes put tension on my hips and back and knees, and I’m already having a particularly bad 36 hours (so far) with my chronic pain.  This is on top of being still sick and then also having had all of my “Meta™” based accounts‒Facebook, Instagram, Threads‒permanently disabled.

Yes, that’s right, I did the little appeal button thing and in very short order (a time so short that we know that no sentient being was involved in the entire process) it was denied and my accounts were permanently disabled.  I did put in a request for a downloadable file with all my info but that hasn’t worked so far‒the only link I received requires me to access my no-longer-existing account to get my data.

I’m sure there’s some legal process through which one could go if one wanted truly to fight the thing.  Lawsuits could be filed.  Or, what would be more satisfying, Luca Brasi could be sent to visit.  But though vengeance is always attractive, I don’t have the energy even to fantasize about it right now.

Honestly, I’ve lost everything I literally, physically had more than once* in the past 20 years.  This virtual stuff is chicken shit.

I enjoyed the sites mentioned, of course.  It was fun watching cosplayers and seeing funny memes and the various video rants on Instagram.  Facebook was nice for seeing what people from my past are doing and keeping in vague contact with them.  Threads was actually, literally useful for my mental health on at least one occasion.

But beyond the basic, straightforward bit, I’m sure as gravity not going to fight to try to keep them in my life.  If they want me gone then I want to be gone even more.  Actually, no, that isn’t really how I feel, that’s merely a bit of rhetoric.  I just don’t see those things as part of my identity, so while their loss is a disappointment, that’s one of the fundamental features of life:  it is inherently unsatisfactory.  I don’t see how it could be otherwise.

It is curious that only the Meta® platforms gave me grief.  I still have Bluesky, and The Website Formerly Known as Twitter, and Substack, and of course, here (WordPress).  You would think that the people at Meta℠ wanted to promote their competitors.

Or, perhaps, someone in other venues is hacking existing Meta©-based accounts, posting flagrantly inappropriate things, and getting all sorts of people kicked off those accounts so they’ll be forced to use one (or more) of the others.  It’s diabolical!

Not really, of course.  It’s actually more pathetic than anything else.  Or it would be, if it were happening, which I doubt it is.  Still, humans compete over sillier/stupider things than that in order to jockey for position in their particular baboon flange.  It would take a lot for them to shock me.

Given that I am, perforce, not using Instagram, maybe I should try TikTok, what do you think?

Not likely.  I’ve never felt seriously interested in that venue, though I gather it has similarities with Instagram.  It just feels like “more of the same”.  And I have some things in common with the “antagonist” of my short story Penal Colony, in that social media can be briefly engaging for me, but I get tired of it pretty quickly.

I use YouTube a lot, but that’s because it has actual, full-scale content, educational or entertaining or both, requiring an actual attention span.  I’ve learned a lot via YouTube, and I’ve had a lot of laughs, sometimes both at the same time.  But eventually, even I can only rewatch the same videos so many more times.  The same is true even for books, though, so no shade to YouTube there.

Substack, of course, has actual scholarly articles and discussions from serious thinkers of various stripes.  I’ve mentioned occasionally the possibility of either moving my blog there or maybe just reposting some posts there.  But that’s a lot of work, and I’m lazy (or, well, the vector magnitude of my interest is not as great as the vector magnitude of the anticipated irritation of the process).

Who knows, maybe this will be a beneficial occurrence?  Then again, almost anything can be seen as beneficial depending on what measure of beneficence one uses.  As the saying goes, “it’s an ill wind that blows no man any good”.  Something has to be very, very bad indeed in order for no one and nothing at any level to benefit from it.

There are many paths to pretty much any destination, and the quality of one’s own path, judged retrospectively, is a measure that is heavily subject to cognitive biases.  This in itself can be useful, though it isn’t always so.

Anyway, for now, don’t look for me on Facebook or Threads or Instagram.  I’ll share these posts via Bluesky and Substack and X, but you can always find them here where you are now.  If you want to “message” me, well, the comments below are always open (within reason).

I hope you have a good day.

*Really, more than twice, depending on how completely and irrevocably lost one requires everything to be to count is a member of that set.