One Redeeming Quality Might Be Enough

I maybe should be more appreciative toward Facebook — or whoever developed the idea that Facebook commandeered its “memories” function from (I want to say, “Timehop,” but I’m not sure and don’t care enough to do the research). I’m not being facetious, and this is not a new revelation. I have made this assertion many times before; the “memories” function is among Facebook’s most redeeming qualities. In fact, it might be Facebook’s only redeeming quality. So, I give the platform itself a lot of shit, I criticize the money-people behind it (not the regular day-to-day employees, they are just doing a job) and, generally, think when weighing the pros and cons, the cons break the scale, but that does not mean that this one pro should not be given it’s due — again.

There was a time — before e-everything or Apple’s betterized i-everything, before this informational epoch — the “age of information” — was upon us, that our personal histories were recorded differently. Just before the computer revolution took hold, an age that I, like other Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers are very familiar with, we appeared to rely more on the oral, tribal tradition. I can’t say with certainly for most other families, but the general feeling I get is that we did not write a whole lot of our familial histories down — we passed it down verbally. While there are a few analog photographs that date back (if we are lucky) 150 years, at most, for most of us, the only printed records of us are kept by record-keeping agencies. There is no story told, at least not in a story-telling way.

A 1936 Time Magazine drawing of Santayana

However, there were some who did more than just remember and talk. There were some who did keep written records in the form of diaries and journals. And some are/were meticulous. Mine were not, and while they, I believe, are “around somewhere,” I have no idea where and even if I could find them, the records I wrote were a very brief window in time. Some people, however, wrote with much more detail — with names, dates and places. They are rich and robust. And, we, as a society, have greatly benefited from those personal histories — to fill in gaps, to add humanity, to lend insight and in thousands of other ways the original authors could never have known.

Much has been lost and even that which survives is not so easily accessible. It cannot be searched, indexed, organized, sorted, etc. like the digital versions Facebook’s archives (and IG, and Twitter, and all else) can be. Furthermore, there are not just a few dedicated souls documenting their lives — many on a daily basis — for posterity. Y’all are journaling, y’all are writing in your diaries and you’re doing it with the kind of precision that will make it extremely valuable 100, 200, 500 years from now. It doesn’t have to be a 700-word or more essay like this — most aren’t and most won’t read even this far (and someone will comment about how this is too long). But because of Facebook and, in a similar fashion, all other social media platforms, we are all now writing not only our own familial, personal histories for the benefit of our offspring, but society will benefit from it, too.

I was inspired to write this today by my own Facebook history, what they used to call “on this day,” what is now simply, “memories.” I opened my Facebook account in May 2006, but I didn’t get active on it until about two years later. Today, July 9th, my Facebook “memories” date back to 2009. Apparently, this general time of year has been something of a personal roller-coaster — as recently as two years ago. However, even that particular undulation was not as pronounced as some in the past have been. The peaks and valleys are, according to the historical record, smoothing out. I have some memories of tumult that precede Facebook — plenty — and some took place during this time of the year, too, but the precision that e-everything gives me is lacking. I cannot see any patterns or trending like I can in the past decade or so. That additional information, that context, is valuable, and I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge Facebook’s role in it.

Is it worth it? Is Facebook’s one redeeming quality worth all the bullshit that comes with it? Short answer: No. Longer answer: Still no, but with a caveat. In time, the cons, the vastness of the deceit and the lies and the divisiveness that is also part if this historical record will also be preserved. Maybe, just maybe, we will survive all this division, rise above it and that history will be the history we learn from. Because if we don’t, we are surely doomed to repeat it.