Checking Facebook is like shopping at Sam’s Club or Costco. You never really know what you’re going to find when you get there or if you’ll even see anything you want. But you keep going back anyway. The experience is overwhelming. Both are a giant collections of stuff, most of which you probably don’t need or care about. Frequent visits to Facebook only leave you with anger, nostalgia, bitterness, and melancholy — Trips to Costco yield a 10 lb bag of Famous Amos cookies and a patio bluetooth speaker that looks convincingly like a flower pot. You could have learned how to make that pot on Facebook. But, you can buy it for a price you hope is competitive while you’re at Sam’s Club and save all the hassle. Neither of which is at all anything you intended to do with your day.
I could also spend hours on Facebook and learn nothing, see nothing, and achieve nothing. But yet I keep coming back again and again hoping for that one nugget. That one great post from a long-lost friend you haven’t heard from in years. A reply to an inane post that proves my friends really do love me. What am I looking for when I swipe through that damned site? Collections of pictures of cats on catnip? Drunk girl fails. A lemon coconut bar recipe? I don’t know but I’ll keep trying until I do.
Costco is the same. You return because you have a vague idea you need to shop for some stuff. Maybe few basics. A pack of chicken for dinner; three lbs should do it. Some toothpaste. And maybe something for the garden. You just want to see what’s there. Browse. But, ultimately, you leave the store with a bulk 30 lb bag of frozen chicken breasts, an eight tube, three-year supply of Crest, a new grill (you already had one), a new Wolfgang Puck fifteen piece knife set, and a 250 foot garden hoses (that promises not to kink). Have you ever tried to coil a 250 foot garden hose? That fucker is guaranteed to kink. And to lay in the yard for weeks. What I ended up with was not at all what I wanted when I started. And I return to shop there again and again.
Too much time spent on Facebook looking for God knows what and walking away feeling more tired and poor than when I started. The same for Sam’s or Costco. Definitely more tired and poor after leaving there. Wandering and looking with no real aim in mind. Taking away things you don’t need and don’t really make your life better. Just stuff – mental stuff and actual stuff.
