Well, it was nice while it lasted...

Did you notice feeling lighter? Less aggravated today? As though a cloud had briefly lifted from your life and for a moment, just a moment, the world was slightly less of a garbage fire? Well mystery solved: Facebook was down.

"Good riddance..."

-Everyone

"Oh, thank God, Facebook's back up.

-Everyone six hours later

Huh. I bet he's regretting breaking up.
Maybe you should like his dog pic?

Instagram and WhatsApp too, although I don't send many instant grams and I don't actually know what WhatsApp is even for. Facebook however was offline for about six hours forcing users to share dumb political memes and links to totally legit studies showing that the COVID vaccine reprograms your DNA to make you more open to socialist mind-control. It was tragic. For six hours today, you couldn't keep anonymous tabs on former classmates, coworkers you don't really talk to, and your college ex. Did you know he got a dog? 

Did uh...did no one notice her
walking out with piles of evidence?

And today the hilarious joke on the internet is how great it would be if Facebook went down for good. And maybe it would be great. I agree. In fact, just yesterday a former employee called Frances Haugen identified herself as the whistleblower who quit and walked out the door with reams--well, I don't know if they were literal reams, do documents even come in reams anymore? What is a ream? Doesn't matter, the point is Haugen put a ton of documents out there suggesting that Facebook knowingly spreads hate speech and misinformation because money. Which, I mean, that tracks right? Because bullshit and trolling is was more click-on-able than well-researched information and reasonable debate. Also everything is like, super-fucked up right now. 

But I think the question is, would we miss Facebook if it suddenly disappeared for good and I think the answer is yes, in the short term anyway. The short term being a few hours. But in the long run, no. Not because it isn't slowly killing us and its absence would trigger a renewed interest in kindness, civility, and real, human interaction, but because something else would inevitably replace it and we'd forget it ever existed in the first place.

Exactly.