Six day
ago, I posted a quote from ski film maker/documentarian Warren Miller to my “timeline”
on Facebook. It was, in true Miller
fashion, clever, sarcastic and said more about a lot of shit than a paragraph
or more ever could. Two days before that, I posted a screenshot of my last text
message and a memory of my last conversation with one of my closest friends –
ever – Art Werstler. It was one year ago, but he did not pass until September, however,
COVID incapacitated him to the point that he was unable to communicated much,
and then, only at the end, with his family. I also added on some thoughts
regarding the medium I referred to as “Fakebook,” a much more fitting name for
this platform that makes distortions of reality so common it appears normal –
that distorted reality actually is reality.
Since posting
that Warren Miller quote (don’t worry, I didn’t forget – I’ll get to it), I
have not interacted with Fakebook via my own timeline/profile/page/whatever except
to post links to stuff I’ve published elsewhere – stuff like this – usually to
my spot in the online magazine, The Medium. But it could also come from
my personal blog and I could, in the future, post other creative works using
other media, such as video, as well. The key distinction is that nothing is
being produced for Fakebook (the Miller quote was, despite it being properly
attributed and clearly not my words, it was placed on my timeline – only). Although
I have interacted with the few commenters from those two posts, I am still on
the fence about whether I will continue to do so. At the moment, there are very
few; this is no surprise considering the average Fakebook user’s attention span
is less than a paragraph, never mind five or more woven together in a well-spun
tapestry. However, I’d prefer that those “conversations” occur in the areas
provided in the original publications.
That
quote? I posted it because I found it smart, clever, witty, and everything I said
about it above. I figured my Facebook “friends” would see it and find the same
in it that I did. And for some, I knew it would have a time-delayed element,
that it would hit them a second, a few seconds or even moments later. And, the
truth? I wanted that to be a reflection on me. I post the smart shit, I make
those bold statements on society and the particular topic of this quote – sincerity
– is one I’ve spoken about many times before. Posting the quote from an icon of
the stature of Warren Miller validates me and my position on it. That quote
is, “The secret to being a good [ski]
instructor is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made” (Miller,
1982). The paradox of faking sincerity is, of course, what sends this quote
into the stratosphere, but it begs the question: Why did I feel compelled to
post it, especially after I “swore off” Fakebook?
It’s a good question and one
that I didn’t really consider until recently. As it turns out, in light of the
conflicts I was having with Fakebook, the post felt rather empty. It became a
microcosm of so much of what I would put out into the Fakebook “environsphere.”
It was almost, but not exactly, a passive-aggressive declaration of who-I-am.
And while it is certainly true that I am partly about what that quote denotes,
at least as far as I perceive it, there is so much more to me than that. I
realize that I could be over-analyzing myself (not that I ever do that…),
but the mindlessness of the things we place into the world simply because we
can, sans any kind of reflection as to why, could be a big part of what
makes Fakebook fake.
The two things that have
appeared on my timeline since are like this – much more detailed, explorative,
nuanced and rich. They require more than two seconds to consume and will only
be consumed by those who are truly interested. They are not “drive-by” posts on
someone’s news feed and, when they do generate comments, those comments are typically
not of the drive-by variety, either. For those who want to come to my “home” on
Facebook to see what I am up to, they will no longer find the Reader’s Digest
version of me, but, rather, if interested enough, they will find some reading
to do. If you want to know who-I-am, it will require the commitment to find
out. Unfortunately, the quickie Fakebook post standard has been pretty well
established, I do not expect many to make the effort. But that is not my
concern – my concern is authenticity. And… sincerity, not faking it.
Since leaving the inane shit
off my Fakebook timeline, my writing output immediately increased. It seems I
need a creative outlet, but Fakebook was the junk food equivalent substitution for
nutritionally balanced meals. I wrote a lot of longer, original posts for Facebook,
but, with rare exception, they were short by literary standards, but still long
by Fakebook standards a very unhappy medium. This is the third substantive work
I’ve written in the last week, an output in frequency the likes of which I
haven’t seen since I began using Facebook regularly many years ago.
Coincidence? Partly, maybe; I’m sure there are other factors at play, but the evidence
that posting stupid, fast (even if they were “important”) things to Facebook
seemed to satisfy any desire to do the real work it takes to do this. And this
is who-I-am.
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