[img]139|left|||no_popup[/img] I have one of those phone messages people complain about. I tell callers what number they have dialed and kindly ask them to leave a message if they are so inclined. My mother hates my message. She asks how people will know whom they’ve reached. I figure you either know me and will leave a message or you hope you know me, leave a message and take your chances. The last thing I want to do is give someone from whom I may not want to hear more information about me. I don’t want to validate telemarketers or let the robocallers know that they’ve reached a live one.
Despite how my essays read, I’m an intensely private person. There are reasons I have an unlisted phone number, a few dummy email addresses that forward to the “real” one, a pseudonym for my fiction writing, and a completely different on-line alter ego. I don’t want everyone in the world to know about everything I do.
Slowly, I have self-inflicted privacy erosion. When I Google myself, I’m startled with the amount of information I have revealed. The erosion probably started with my blog, which harkens back to May 2003. That’s about nine years of stuff that I can’t remember writing, but likely reveals a whole lot about me. Then three years ago, I got on Facebook. The invites from my real friends poured in. At first, it was fun. The older I get, the busier I am, the less I want to drive all around L.A. to see friends. It was like a wonderful window into the world of people I know well. Then it was a window into the world of people I know less well, but find humorous for some reason. Then it was a window into the world of people I knew from high school and college. It even, unfortunately, became a window into a world of annoying or shamelessly self-promoting people I now mostly block. Which is what real life is about, isn’t it? Growing up gives you the ability to restrict contact with some people, while expanding contact with others. It’s called a filter—and I want it back.
Decision Time
Now that Facebook is going public, it’s time for me to quit. Slavery is long over (in the U.S., at least), and I’m not ready to be sold for a mere one hundred and twenty-five dollars.
I started the two-step process of deleting my account last week, but stopped amid protest of friends I actually like and who humor me. But I’ve cut back on the excessive checking, posting, etc., that can quickly consume precious free time in an otherwise hectic day. Can you say “toddler,” anyone?
Yes, I know that Google, Facebook, and likely countless other online companies are regularly scooping up information on every key stroke. Yes, I know that unlike those genuinely progressive Western countries, our little backwater nation does not require companies to tell the citizenry what information they are gathering about us. Yes, I’ve read a privacy policy or two, or four, but have not been reassured by any of them. And yes, I think that there is some price to pay for “free” e-mail, “free” searches, “free” social networking.
If I Do Quit, Then What?
But that price is suddenly getting too high. Google’s latest announcement that they’re going to include people’s social networking posts is both creepy and sad. Do I really want to know what random folks think of that new wallet I’m looking at? How are those peoples’ haphazard comments even relevant to a web search? All this social networking connectivity makes me think of switching to Bing.
I know nothing in life is free. But must my every move be tracked as the basis for new millionaires and billionaires? I was thrilled to finally find a bit of code that hid by web browsing from Facebook. The whole Facebook Connect and its presence on what seemed like zillions of websites, creeped me out. Especially when ads would pop up on FB with contextual ads based on shoes I had looked at or newspaper articles I’d read.
In our Citizen’s United corporatocracy, I’m not sure I want a (soon-to-be) public company to have this kind of access to all my information. Everything I “like.” Everything I click on. Every story I read or post has built a profile of who I am, and probably what I’m likely to buy. I’m not ready to have my profile be just one more commodity up for grabs on the stock exchange. I am a person, not just a consumer.
But quitting is hard. Where will I get to hear about the exploits of some of my friends? How will I connect with people who don’t reach out in any other way? One business I am considering investing in only had updates about its new products on Facebook. But must I serve the last forty years of my life up to these information plunderers on a platter via the new “timeline,” to post pictures of the baby or a vacation?
Email and a blog used to be enough online interaction: Posted a few vacation photos on a website, sent an email, and that was it. If someone didn’t want to call me (and as a native East Coaster, I acknowledge the time difference is hard), they could just drop me a line or two electronically, and I’d respond at my leisure. For the folks not on Facebook, that’s how I still communicate. Because no social network, not Friendster, not MySpace, not Facebook, not Google+ has ever offered all my ‘friends’ in one place.
It’s time to get back to the world of face-to-face interaction. I’d like to hear about your vacations in person, enjoy food together and not just a virtual snapshot of your plate. Perhaps we could actually do something together. There’s even, gasp, real U.S. Mail for those who don’t live close by.
I don’t need a company to “connect to all the areas of my life. Me, a real live person can do the lynchpin act all by myself.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
