Tuesdays with Tom: The #deletefacebook Movement
I’ll never forget the first time I had heard of Facebook. I was sitting at a lunch table as a high school freshman. All of us dumb kids were on MySpace (I heard plenty of MySpace Tom jokes) arguing over who should be in our Top 8 and what someone’s profile song was. A friend mine approached the table and said that college kids had moved on to something called Facebook. It wasn’t long after that that the entire school seemingly joined overnight and starting writing on people’s walls. Fast forward about 4 years and The Social Network immortalized the company forever. Facebook wasn’t a fad like MySpace -- it was here to stay. And it’s only gotten bigger since. But suddenly, Facebook doesn’t seem immortal anymore. The company’s come under fire over the past year for a number of reasons. The most recent was last week’s #deletefacebook movement that made me ponder: are people actually starting to leave Facebook behind?
When I first joined Facebook in 2008, there were around 100 million users worldwide. Today, over 2 billion people have Facebook accounts and the number only continues to grow. 68 percent of US adults check the site daily. Of course that doesn’t take into account the current cultural conversation with Facebook, which is has shined a light on the company’s path to financial success. Most people consider Facebook as a means to connect with their friends and family online. At least, that was the initial purpose. But Facebook slowly became a social media empire when they realized that they were sitting on a gold mine of unique data for advertisers to pounce on and for the company to grow rich off of. Every time you like, comment, react to something on your Facebook, you create a data point for your profile that Facebook can leverage and advertisers can use to find you. For years, no one batted an eye. Maybe you didn’t realize that this was happening but if you did, you didn’t care. Now it appears people do care.
One of the biggest hurdles with the #deletefacebook movement is...well you can’t actually delete your account. You can only deactivate your account but it doesn’t get erased from existence permanently. As someone who just recently did this myself, I find the practice pretty annoying, but Facebook clearly knows what it’s doing. If you go to deactivate your account, you are instantly flooded with photos and captions like “Joe is going to miss you!”. Many people have had their Facebook for years and as much as I may laugh about it, people have serious connections to their photos and posts from the past. Facebook smartly has played into the nostalgia of their platform by sending you notifications of anniversaries from posts and photos that drum up this nostalgia and remind you of why you may have loved it in the first place. To deactivate your account is to essentially delete your past and some people simply aren’t willing to do that, no matter how much they feel the company has compromised them.
Another reason I find it hard to believe people will start deleting their Facebook accounts in mass has nothing to do with the company at all. It’s more about how we’re all addicted to our phones. The same 2 billion people on Facebook also have smartphones and they’re specifically designed to keep you using the phone all day long. Facebook knows this all too well. When you pull to refresh your News Feed it’s similar to pulling slots on a machine in a casino and that’s no accident. They want you to become used to that action. Many apps mimic this technique. Push notifications from the Facebook app give you reasons to check it all day and your brain reacts in a way that simulates the response to a text or a call from a person. You could certainly undo these habits over time, but that’s easier said than done.
Even if you feel so strongly about getting rid of Facebook with the above reasons in mind, there’s another cynical reality about sticking it to the man by deleting your account. If you really wanted to hurt the company’s bottom line, you’d also have to delete Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Odds are you have at least one if not all of those apps and they’re all owned by Facebook. No one is quitting the site in droves yet, but unless you plan to remove yourself from social media and messaging altogether, Facebook is still going to exist and lively thrive for many years. Resistance is futile?
Personally, I can only speak for how I use the platform which is primarily to joke around with friends. I like to think there can be some good left in Facebook. It’s a great place to create temporary groups, promote yourself, plan party type events, get the occasional concert ticket. It’s far from a perfect system, but Google and Amazon basically do the same things Facebook does and no one is threatening to delete their gmail accounts or Amazon Prime memberships. Sure, it frightens me that we might become a country controlled by 5 companies, Facebook included. But at this point, if you’re a reasonable adult you know what you’re getting into and you should be able to decide for yourself. And if you think Facebook actually swayed the election, you’re not paying attention anyways.
So long story short, outside of a small minority, people aren’t quitting Facebook yet. Someday in the future Facebook will become a punchline like the rest of its social media predecessors. But that day still seems far away. Besides, I have an annual Green Day joke that I have to continue and how the hell am I going to remember when everyone’s birthday is.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
Happy Belated birthday to my brother Matt, who is teaching America’s youth during his days. Matt had the pleasure of celebrating his birthday as a young child one year in Jamaica and while he might not remember any of it, it was a great time. If you see a large guy with a beard walking around, wish him a happy Cadillac Williams year.
Perhaps my influence in this newsletter is larger than I thought. After complaining about Lollapalooza’s ticket selling strategy last week, for the first time in several years they didn’t sell out 4-day passes instantly. In fact, you can still buy them right now if you want. As for the lineup? Let’s just say -- it’s not great.
I gave a recent science fiction film a try over the weekend. Annihilation, which is based on a book by the same name, stars Natalie Portman as molecular biology professor who decides to enter an alien-like energy field called “The Shimmer” to figure out what happened to her husband (Oscar Isaac). This movie had a lot of the right pieces to make a great movie, but it wasn’t fully formed and had some pretty dumbfounding moments (particularly the ending). If you love sci-fi, give it a shot on demand but I won’t be adding it to my pantheon of great flicks in 2018.
Every once in a while a feel-good sports story captures the hearts of a nation in a most unexpected way. Case in point: The 2018 Loyola Ramblers basketball team. They just tied the record for the lowest seeded team to make the Men’s Final Four in NCAA history. Their odds of winning a national championship before this incredible run were 300-1. Now they’re the talk of the town and their most prominent figure is a 98-year old nun named Sister Jean. What a cool story. I look forward to this weekend’s match-ups for college hoops.
Working in the corporate world, I am amused at what random phrases and idioms become part of the dialogue. This past week, a phrase I found myself using over and over again was “a rising tide lifts all boats”. I screwed it up the first couple of times and finally got frustrated enough to look up its origin (shoutout to a previous newsletter). Turns out that good ole JFK coined the phrase in reference to a healthy US economy. That wasn’t at all how I was using it, but good to know. Get on the boat with me people!
You may remember a gravelly voiced bearded gentlemen from old Men’s Wearhouse commercials saying “You’re going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.” His name is George Zimmer and five years ago he was fired from the company he founded. So that’s why you haven’t seen him echoing this famous ad slogan for awhile. So what does Men’s Wearhouse do now you ask? I found out on TV Sunday. They have a new spokesman a guy named “The Tailor”. He looks nothing like Mr. Zimmer and if you were expecting them to start from scratch with the new line of commercials, I’ve got some bad news for you. I don’t have a clip, but this is one of the most hilarious uncomfortable ads I’ve seen on TV in quite some time. The spot opens with a Dad-type man saying “Time to ditch the Dad suit!”. The Tailor appears out of nowhere and gives the new pitch. Then the following exchange happens.
TAILOR: “There you are!"
MAN: “Here I am!"
TAILOR: “You’re going to like the way you look...in a great fitting suit."
That’s right folks. Almost no change from the original slogan, only they just kinda shrug off the key part of the line. I don’t really have a horse in this race, but either scrap the whole line or keep it and act like nothing happened with George Zimmer. I’m incredibly amused by this!