I double-dog dare you to post this!

   

     Maybe we don't need the law to rein in Facebook. Maybe eventually people will just get bored with it.
     I certainly am.
     Every morning I dump my column, or blog post, in the little "What's on your mind?" oblong, to afflict others with it ... whoops, so eager readers can find it there. For the clicks. And I at least try to look at what Facebook friends are posting, to see what folks are talking about. 

     But it's a fairly empty experience. People I don't know celebrating their anniversaries. Posting motivational poems. Sharing their vacations. Ads for stuff I don't want. And odd, out-of-left-field challenges. Like this:

     "Someone once said, “When you love someone with dementia you lose them more and more everyday. When they are diagnosed, when they go through different stages, when they go into care and when they die. ‘Rapidly shrinking brain’ is how doctors describe it. As the person’s brain slowly dies, they change physically and eventually forget who their loved ones are. They can eventually become bedridden, unable to move and unable to eat or drink.”

     A former college classmate, my age. Not sharing grim news of her own, but a canned chain letter. It ended:

     "There will be people who will scroll by this message because dementia has not touched them. They may not know what it's like to have a loved one who has fought or is fighting a battle against dementia. To raise awareness of this cruel disease, a special thank you to all willing to post to their timeline."

     Or ..... there may be people whose lives have been abso-fucking-lutely touched by dementia, and are all for "sharing awareness," but just aren't into tiny symbolic gestures, those happy pink ribbons that insulting suggest you can beat back bad old Mr. Cancer if only you keep a really positive attitude, and chafe against the I-double-dog-dare-you-to-post-this ethos that so infects Facebook. Like we're all in sixth grade. I thought of commenting. But that sparks all this Punch-and-Judy bickering that ends nowhere, and I just don't have the energy for that. I unfollowed her instead.
     Yes, it's good for people to be aware. And given how many people don't understand medicine, science, vaccines, who can't differentiate between an example and proof (Colin Powell dying of COVID despite being vaccinated is no more an indictment of vaccines than someone dying in a car crash despite wearing a seatbelt undercuts the advisability of seat belts) they need all the awareness they can get.
     But the flip side of awareness is over-stimulation. Everything, from everyone, all the time. The demonstrably untrue assertion that we can combat something just by lavishing our precious attention over it. That's sometimes true. But you can also combat something by focusing less attention on it. The less time on social media, particularly Facebook, the better. You don't need the government to tell you that.