Wow, They Call It Facebook

How hard can a man fight Facebook? I did the hate Facebook for years. I kept seeing fakey fake selfies from the French Riviera. Really? Facebook looked to me to be full on BS. Even the name pissed me off – “Facebook”, come on now. But today it is different. Facebook actually connects me. Now that is so cool. Facebook does not control my life, Facebook enhances it.

My sister says I am a Luddite. My 9 year old says I have technical atrophy. Now how does a 9 year old come up with that term? He is in the top 5% of the world in a game. He never gets to play more than 30 minutes at a time and less than 1.5 hours on any day. How does he do that? Mom says it is a war game. Fine, we play stick fighting, nerf wars and water balloon fights. Isn’t that what “playing war” is? He is beating me mostly these days. I am not touching his online stuff.

A new phone for me. 1^st in 8 years. The boy is setting it up for me but teaching me the set up is rather tedious. He is patient thank goodness.

So “Facebook”? I just figured out that you can post by just hitting enter. I have to be careful there. I am getting over the term “friend”. It seems I have a lot of friends. Well I was spending some time looking at them yesterday. That is amazing. They really are friends. Really? You can have a whole bunch of friends. I am going to write a political post. Or I think maybe not. People do not like being neutral. But I write “sermons” and they get great reviews. Politics and Religion are mostly better left for beers with your buddies you have no problem having a fist fight with. Do not get me wrong I like a good fight, especially with friends who do not bite. Biting is just wrong.

So what of this thing they named Facebook where the owners and users can make 500 Billion dollars. Too cray cray for me. But I want to do something “viral”. I think that is the term that is used. That is just gross. “Going Viral”. That is a disease that hurts people. Oh maybe that is the point about being braindead watching it. Maybe?

Now please do not get me wrong here. I like that YouTube thing and Netflix deal also. Really cool stuff. You can just type something in and whamo bamo you get great movies and music. My boy has a filter on his. He does not like the yucky stuff. I hear him. Mom just watches old Vietnamese videos and so we laugh at her. I had live TV up until about 2010. It just got all whacky so do not have that in my home.

I saw some lady watching news in the waiting area the other day. My my she looked so agitated. I do not need news to do our donations to St. Judes or my wife’s church. It seems that some people have it hard. I do not think I need to watch about it. Oh do not worry I have a real liberal and a kind of conservative “news” outlets on my “feed”. Interesting, but kind of seems like the tabloids in my grocery line. Planting tomatoes seems a better expenditure of my time. Maybe no and I am not going to figure it out. We are learning about geography and not about actors.

Here is a fun one for you. In the late nineties into about 2004 I was a GIS. So funny those initials/acronym. Global Internet Strategist. I actually travelled half the globe in order to promote internet usage by governments. My favorite was for W.H.O. World Health Organization. UN. Can you imagine remote medical care to the Sudan? But I don’t know how to plug in a device without help for the first 5 times. Policy is a different dog than applications.

So about this Facebook. It is so cool. Just like drugs for pain it can be abused. It can lead to problems and injury to health. I have not yet seen a 12 step program for addicts. Maybe you and I can start one and get our National Health peoples to label it a disease. Seems like it may work. I heard of deaths due to folks doing Facebook while driving. I hear texting and driving now kills more than drunk drivers. Now that is an issue of public health. But like medications Facebook is not bad, misuse and overuse is.

Now do not look in this direction for a poster child. I was 5 minutes late picking up my boy on Monday. I was dancing out some Motown. I felt so bad, but he was having so much fun he was bummed when I came to get him. Us dads think we are so important.

So anyhow I have these friends of over 50 years. We write each other. Now if it gets better than that let me know. Now of course I had a superior childhood so maybe for some that is not so cool. I have one friend who broke my nose. Fair enough. I think that some folks like to go there and be all BS and others just want to be all negative. I think that is normal. I think it gives us nut cases a chance to give them a hand up. Why not? I do inspirational type writing. I could not be happier than doing it. For some reason I never get “beaten down”. In fact I get a lot of positive stuff back.

Back in the development of the internet we used to say “garbage in and garbage out”. Probably a good saying. It would seem that our caring for each other maybe the key to the proper use of anything communicative. I am a smiling addict. It is so rare I get a frown back. I do happy steps. Seems that those around me pick it up a notch. Probably just me in my head.

Mr. and Mrs. Facebook let people be themselves. Let them be crazy or vent or rant. I figure that is good for them. Better in your home than in my grocery store. We need to feel to the fullest. I need to talk to my fullest. I do reckon there are issues with this social media stuff. For some reason I do not mind it anymore.

Did you know that no matter the negative you can turn it into positive? That is as clear as E=Mc2. If we allow our love and hearts to flow into Facebook we can make a difference to the good. Hey maybe I should go look for some negative stuff there and give it a bunch of love. What an opportunity! Today I will spread some love in my hood and son’s school. But I could go on Facebook and maybe spread it around a lot more.

Hold on a second here, something is becoming more clear than a brand new window freshly washed. “SOCIAL MEDIA”. I can be as social as I choose. I do happy loving social. You can too. Facebook is a canvas. It is up to you to paint what you want.