On composing and deleting

I've developed a habit over the past several months of composing Facebook statuses and deleting them. Or creating them in my head, and not posting.

It began with the conflict in Israel and Gaza this summer. My Facebook feed was quickly full of advocacy from across the political spectrum, "shouting matches", and sharing of gruesome photographs. There didn't seem to be a space for me, for opinions that were more nuanced, for deep sympathy for deaths on all sides, for a real conversation. So I was largely silent.

I understood that my silence came from a place of privilege. It's easy to be silent from across the world. And I understand that my silence could be interpreted as consent - a fact that was deeply troubling as I watched people spread hatred.

My silence wasn't completely a choice. I was simply paralyzed. Many times I wrote something, thought about it, deleted. In person, I spoke about the situation a lot, with my colleagues and family and friends. I was able to express my opinion, to have civil disagreements, even to directly discuss a Facebook status from the other person. But online? Mostly silence.

Then, at the end of the summer, my family experienced a tragic death of a young person - a member, you might say, of the original Facebook generation.  In our times where Facebook has largely replaced the newspaper and no one under the age of fifty reads the obituaries anymore, Facebook has become the the way to share news both good and bad.

I was faced with a question - what, if anything, should I say on social media? I decided to follow the lead of the person closest to the death: when she posted funeral information, so did I. When she shared where donations should go, so did I.

In the process, I realized something. Or rather, JB pointed something out to me. On Facebook, everything is at the same level. There are no categories, no filters, no sections. One minute you are looking at a silly cat video, the next minute you see a death notice. There is no way to differentiate, no way to filter the news from the opinion, the obituaries  from the style section.

In person, in the town square, we can go to the library for information, to the movies for entertainment, to the house of worship for religion, to the grocery store checkout for gossip. We can do the same with sections of the newspaper. On Facebook, it comes at us all at once.

The "all at once" makes it amazing - I never know what I will encounter and daily read an interesting article that I would not have otherwise seen. It makes it challenging. More than once I've seen someone post something deeply private - often about a relationship - and I've learned things that are more intimate than the bounds of our friendship.

And frankly, the "all at once" of Facebook makes it almost impossible to quit. I have several work related groups that live on the platform. It is a platform that has become crucial to professional branding in my field and many others. To leave could affect my career. And to leave would affect my ability to know the news I want to hear. I also don't read the obituaries and I do want to know when someone in my community is experiencing a loss. Or a success. Or a challenge.

But this summer made it clear to me that I personally need to examine my FaceBook habits. I started, almost accidentally, by mostly abstaining during the traditional 30 day Jewish mourning period of shloshim. With the exception of one or two posts, I didn't feel right about sharing fun quips about my day-to-day life while someone I love was in so much pain.

In taking a little time off, I realized that the all day "all at once" onslaught was troubling me personally. Thus while I'm returning to Facebook and will likely once again share all my musings of the day, I've deleted the Facebook app on my phone to create just a little bit of space between me and that overwhelming feed.

I also realized that someone I'm Facebook friends with is always in pain. So I'm trying, especially as I move into the Jewish New Year, to never lose sight of what my posts might look like to others, and to never forget that on the other side of my feed, there are people - people who laugh at silly videos and kvell over cute kid pictures and people who struggle and grief and are lost.  I hope that in 5775, I will be able to remember that those people are my colleagues, acquaintances and friends, and that those people too come to their screens with their whole lives, and leave, once again, to live their lives. Facebook, after all, isn't life. It's just where we talk about it.

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PS: Once again, I almost deleted this post. I'm sharing it, but I want to be very clear that my intentions in doing so are to reflect on and share my own experiences.  My intentions are not to judge yours. And so, with tremendous fear that this is another preachy thing filling up your feed, I share it anyway.  Agree? Disagree? Feel irrelevant or relevant? Please comment.