April 13, 2019 — Carlos Fenollosa

I'm 35. Before Facebook, I had to use different tools depending on whom I wanted to chat with.

I'm not talking about the early era of the Internet, but rather the period after everybody started getting online. Chat was just getting popular, but it was quite limited.

We used ICQ/MSN Messenger to chat with real life friends. IRC was used mostly for "internet friends", as we called them back then. Finally, we had the Usenet and forums for open discussion with everybody else.

If you wanted to post pictures, Flickr was the go-to website. We didn't share many videos, and there was no really good tool to do so, so we didn't care much.

There was Myspace, and Fotolog, very preliminar social networks which had their chance but simply didn't "get it."

Then Facebook appeared. And it was a big deal.

Add me on Facebook

Whenever you met somebody IRL you would add them to Facebook almost immediately, and keep connected through it.

Suddenly, everybody you knew and everybody you wanted to know was on Facebook, and you could reach all of them, or any of them, quickly and easily.

At that time, privacy was not such a big concern. We kinda trusted the network, and furthermore, our parents and potential employers weren't there.

On Facebook, we were raw.

At some point it all went south. The generational change, privacy breaches, mobile-first apps and the mass adoption of image and video moved everybody to alternative platforms. Whatsapp, mainly for private communications, and Instagram as our facade.

I wrote about Facebook's demise so I will not go through the reasons here. Suffice to say, we all know what happened.

The Wall was replaced by an algorithm which sunk original content below a flood of ads, fake news, and externally shared content "you might like". We stopped seeing original content. Then, people stopped sharing personal stuff, as nobody interacted with it.

In the end, we just got fed up with the changes, and maybe some people just wanted something shiny and new, or something easier to use.

Facebook was a product of its era, technologically and socially. But, as a service, it was peak human connection. Damn you Zuck, you connected mankind with a superb tool, then let it slip through your fingers. What a tragic outcome.

Current social networks, not the same thing

I, too, moved to Instagram when friends stopped being active on Facebook and encouraged me to create an account there.

Then I realized how fake it is. Sorry for the cliché, but we all know it's true.

I gave it an honest try. I really wanted to like it. But I just couldn't. At least, not as an alternative to Facebook. Stories were a step forward, but I felt —maybe rightfully— that I was being gamed to increase my engagement, not to have access to my friends content.

Instagram is a very different beast. There is no spontaneity; all posts are carefully selected images, masterfully filtered and edited, showcasing only the most successful of your daily highlights.

I admit it's very useful to connect with strangers, but the downside is that you can't connect with friends the same way you did on Facebook.

Of course, I'm not shooting the messenger, but let me apportion a bit of blame. A service that is a picture-first sharing site and demotes text and comments to an afterthought makes itself really difficult to consider as an honest two-way communication tool.

Instagram is designed to be used as it is actually used: as a posturing tool.

On Facebook you could share a moment with friends. With Instagram, however, moments are projected at you.

I miss Facebook

I miss knowing how my online friends are really doing these days. Being able to go through their life, their personal updates, the ups and the downs.

I miss spontaneous updates at 3 am, last-minute party invites, making good friends with people who I just met once in person and now live thousands of kilometers away.

I miss going through profiles of people to learn what kind of music and movies they liked, and feeling this serendipitous connection based on shared interests with someone I did not know that well in real life.

I miss the opportunity of sharing a lighthearted comment with hundreds of people that understand me and will interpret it in the most candid way, instead of the nitpicking and criticism of Twitter.

I miss the ability to tell something to my friends without the need of sharing a picture, the first-class citizen treatment of text.

I miss the degree of casual social interaction that Facebook encouraged, where it was fine to engage with people sporadically. On the contrary, getting a comment or a Like from a random acquaintance could make your day.

I miss when things online were more real, more open.

I miss peak Facebook; not just the tool, but the community it created.

Facebook was the right tool at the right time

Somebody might argue that, for those people I am not in touch anymore, they were clearly not such big friends. After all, I still talk to my real-life friends and share funny pics via Whatsapp.

Well, those critics are right; they were not so important in my life as to keep regular contact. But they still held a place in there, and I would have loved to still talk to them. And the only socially acceptable way to keep in touch with those acquaintances was through occasional contact via Facebook. I've heard the condescending "pick up the phone and call them"; we all know that's not how it works.

In the end, nobody is in a position to judge how people enjoy their online tools. If users prefer expressing themselves with pictures rather than text, so be it. There is nothing wrong with fishing for Likes.

So please don't misinterpret me, nobody is really at fault. There was no evil plan to move people from one network to another. No one forced friends to stop posting thoughts and post only pics. Instagram just facilitated a new communication channel that people happened to like more than the previous one.

When Facebook Inc. started sensing its own downfall, they were happy to let its homonymous service be cannibalized by Instagram. It's how business works. The time of Facebook had passed.

I'm sorry I can't provide any interesting conclusion to this article. There was no real intent besides feeling nostalgic for a tool and community that probably won't come back, and hopefully connecting with random strangers that might share the same sentiment.

Maybe, as we all get older, we just want to enjoy what's nice of life, make everybody else a little bit jealous, and avoid pointless online discussions. We'd rather shut up, be more careful, and restrict our online interactions to non-rebuttable pictures of our life.

We all, however, lost precious connections on the way.

Tags: life, internet, facebook, web

Comments? Tweet