MySpace was a thing my friends and I resisted, but Facebook entered my life around age 15, when an attractive classmate invited me. I could be criticized for a lack of willpower when I joined the tool at that age, though I think that'd be unfair. Shortly thereafter, the service atomized every in-person form of social interaction I had once held dear, into a set of in-person interactions which were the footnote to an online logbook. I'm not sure how to qualify the negative impact the "social internet" had on myself and my peers, but I think it's probably immeasurable and not dissimilar from epidemic narcotic use.

This continued through my young adulthood, during which time the traditional media was covering the suicide of Tyler Clementi and later Aaron Schwarz. I noticed the tool routinely used for cyberbullying, outing classmates of alternate sexualities, contact with strangers and subsequent dysfunctional communication, race hate, other forms of anomic and disinhibited communication, abusive surveillance of individuals within human courtships, and the routine use of aliases. Violence associated with online "socialization" continues to escalate in countless communities. Later, the implementation of Facebook Live would popularize its worldwide use for live video broadcast of interpersonal physical violence. Knowing the marketing effects of most other media, the deployment of that particular functionality was probably a given after the Clementi suicide.

The effects of the tool upon partly-or-entirely political processes such as election, incarceration, hiring, policing, etc., are still for-profit and poorly-characterized. With a user count in the billions, billions in value, contracts with data mining firms, use as a media outlet by municipalities in lieu of traditional public media, its probably safe to say they are sizable and wholly-undemocratic. It is comedic that the idea of "democratization" is used in conjunction with a technology whose aim is to recontextualize friendship as an interaction which occurs at an extreme distance and with intensive record-keeping, as opposed to the chance in-person encounter of individuals with their spoken narratives in an agora, square, etc.

The sort of behavior for which Facebook exists and continues to exist is the exact behavior legislated against upon the now-decommissioned ARPANet. The internet was never open or free. To say now, "The internet should neither be commercial nor political, but can be free" is too late, a lie, and unfair. The Kindle is a great device. Text messaging may be a small improvement to the human condition, like the lightbulb, or motor cartage. Remarks on Facebook are likely confined to the realm of observation.

Media is not inherently social. For it to be social, its purpose has to be removed from a dominant narrative and subsequent revenues upon this narrative, which is necessarily impossible. Community farming, in spite of its tremendous cost, is social. Healthcare, in spite of its tremendous cost, is social.

I post these remarks only to document my experiences for posterity. I cannot undo the damage these tools and their attached profit motives have done to my life, but I can note them publicly.