I’m Experiencing Platform Loss
Letting Go of Meta Is Hard
Tech bros are all up in my business and they have been for ages because I willingly and knowingly gave them lots of my personal information. In exchange for connection to my nearest and dearest.
Pretty savvy to commoditize connection. I’ve also given a ton of information to FitBit in exchange for an app that trained me to hydrate and move my body more. I have been giving away my information and attention in exchange for things I value for a long time.
I am not alone in this. Many businesses are built on this. I used to work for them.
I have given my information away perhaps more liberally than others because I haven’t really ever had a true expectation of privacy.
My dad was being followed by the FBI before I was born. The FBI started surveilling my dad when he was in high school, after first surveilling my grandfather. Because their views on race were considered too progressive in the 1940s and 50s.
I went to school with kids whose parents worked in intelligence, and I just broke up with a former spy.
If the FBI doesn’t have a file on me, they can just consult Facebook, where I’ve been documenting my life since 2008, or IG where I’ve shown up many times a day for the past five years.
My file is free and accessible to all.
Unlike my dad’s, which required a FOIA request. Which, when made, only entitled me to the 1,000+ pages amassed before my birth.
I’m not moving away from Meta because of security concerns. My security was compromised before I was born, and I don’t pretend to be more secure here on Substack. I’m moving away from Meta because I don’t like dependence on anything. This is also why I was set up on Substack, Patreon, Medium, and Buy Me a Coffee well before I began moving away from Meta.
I fully expect platforms to fail.
Which helps me weather platform loss better than most. I’m hugely grateful I didn’t work hard to build revenue streams on FB or IG, because that would have increased my dependence.
I’m dependent on the connection—because really Meta had to give me something of immense value for me to give of myself so freely. But I also know how to build connection in more than one place.
And that doing so is vital. Especially in times of great change.
So I’m gradually turning less to Meta to connect, resulting in my showing up more in other places. Including here. Because another thing Meta did was get me addicted to connection and grow my appetite for connection to ever greater levels.
Which is what drug dealers do.
Commoditize things that bring nervous system regulation and get people hooked. Their desperate need for supply will get them to give you more and more.
This is why I struggle in business. Because though that is the model modeled to me from many directions, I do not want to profit from other people’s suffering or addiction to things that soothe them.
Which is why I struggle to pay my rent since my work is helping others alleviate suffering using trauma recovery practices I share with them.
To profit from this would make me feel like Zuck or Musk or Bezos or Gates. Which would make me want to gag. As a recovering bulimic, I try to avoid things that make me want to gag.
Another reason I’m moving away from Meta. I was never really on Twitter, I never shopped at Walmart, and I stopped buying on Amazon or from Whole Foods several years ago. I will wean myself from Target and Google, too.
Gulf of America my ass.
I will experience loss, but each time I choose to move away from something I have come to depend on too much it’s usually because it has also begun to make me want to gag.
Which does make it easier for me to move away. Thank you, wise body.
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