Not On Facebook!

Facebook is, as a friend of mine points out, a great thing.  It lets you share pictures of your kids with your friends who still live halfway across the country (vital, if you’re a coastal transplant like me) and, if you’re an author, it lets you communicate with your fans and lets your fans communicate with each other.  But whether you’re an author or a regular ol’ private citizen, there are certain things that don’t belong on Facebook–ever.

Facebook might have–this time, as my brother observes–become the new normal in terms of communication, but there are still certain things best communicated in person.  Or not at all.  If you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, then don’t say it to (or about them) online.  To wit, I’ve composed a helpful list of specific rubicons that, if crossed, can do permanent damage to your relationships with your loved ones.  Not to mention your reputation.

So, without further ado…

Don’t vaguebook.  This one should be obvious, but it’s not.  Recently I made some discoveries about a person in my life, and her true feelings about me, not because she’d chosen to tell me to my face but because she’d talked about me to other people.  Over a period of–not just days but months.  While I kept asking her, like the fool I am, what was wrong and if there was anything I could do and she kept stonewalling me, telling me everything was fine, she was telling everyone else and their uncle what a horrible person I was.  What was the original sticking point?  I have no idea.  But once you get past a certain point with someone…

I know what the final issue was.  And it had to do with someone bullying my child, and my response to that (which I’m going to address in another post, stay tuned).  The result being that while no one had the courage to address me directly, some almost complete strangers–who apparently think hitting and gay-shaming toddlers is totally okay–took to the airwaves to vent their ire.

My response, on my own personal page, was this:

“Vaguebooking shouldn’t be a thing. People should have the courage of their convictions, in terms of the sentiments they’re expressing, which means sharing those sentiments to the intended person directly, singularly, and to their face. Otherwise, Facebook becomes just one more way for people to share violence into the world and, thus, just one more tool of the Adversary. So, on that note, if you feel the need to vaguebook about me then we’re not good enough friends to be friends on Facebook. Facebook isn’t a substitute for real life. Because, whatever your feelings about me, we’re obviously not close enough for you to share those feelings to my face and I’d never want to be friends with someone of such low character, anyway. So get lost!”

The rules of online interaction should be simple: there is no distinction between “online” and “real life.”  It’s all your real life.  If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, then don’t say it online.  The internet is no substitute for courage.

The second thing that doesn’t belong online are highly personal, frightening, or tragic announcements.  You got engaged?  Fine, put that on Facebook (so long as you told your mother first).  You got cancer?  Don’t choose to tell your loved ones, including your spouse and children, that you have cancer by putting it on Facebook.  Don’t tell your children that one of their siblings has died by putting it on Facebook.  Facebook is not an acceptable means of communicating these things.  I’d argue that that goes for the happy things, too, but at this point I’d settle for the basics.

Those closest to you deserve a different level of effort, in terms of communication, from you than your third grade teacher’s cousin who you friended once five years ago after she made a comment you liked on an argumentative post about vaccines and then forgot about.

I repeat: just like Facebook is not a substitute for courage, it’s also not a substitute for real relationships.  Or for the compassion, sensitivity, and awareness of each person in your life as an individual that go into real relationships.  Yes, telling people things to their faces is hard.  But by putting it on Facebook–however directly or indirectly–you’re still telling them.  You’re not escaping that duty, you’re just discharging it in the most dick way possible.

You’ve still betrayed a trust, ended a friendship, or really hurt a family member’s feelings in these situations–and others.  If you’re familiar with the internet at all (and if you’re not, I don’t know how you’re reading this), then you’ve seen more than your fair share of these things.  Probably in the last week.  That you betrayed someone without having to, say, look them in the eye doesn’t lessen the betrayal.  Hurt feelings don’t “count less,” because they’re the product of online interaction.  There’s still a real, live, human being behind each screen.  A real, live, human being who understands and remembers.

Are you really expecting to see that person, in real life, and act like nothing has happened?

Think about that for a minute, and you’ll realize how futile the exercise is.

An exercise in cowardice.

For authors, specifically, I’ve written a number of posts on what to do (and not do) when it comes to online interaction.  Just check the “Facebook” and “Twitter” tags.  And while most of the advice in this post might seem more personally directed, a check of current events proves otherwise.  We live in an age where authors (literally) lose their minds over less than positive reviews and show up on the reviewers’ doorsteps, ready to confront them.  So my advice in this regard is exactly the same: remember that this isn’t a computer to computer interchange but a person to person interchange and that online counts.

Don’t say things to (or about) fans online that you wouldn’t say to them, to their faces, at a Barnes & Noble.  Don’t use your author page to discuss viewpoints, with which you would not choose to be professionally associated.  Yes, your goal here is to sell books but convincing people that you’re a horrible, hateful person is not the best way to go about doing that.  Don’t attack other authors and don’t use hate speech.  Be polite, and be professional.

Because ultimately, there really is no meaningful distinction between the two.  In work or outside of it, you’re still you.  You still have to live with the consequences of your actions.  And there’s not a person alive who’s going to think, “gosh, he’s a lying, manipulative piece of shit at work (or on his Facebook page), I bet he’s pure as the driven snow at home.”