I already knew that people are nuts, but spending some time in Facebook groups this week has revealed a whole new level of nuts. Maybe it’s The New Nuts. Group members are like piranha, waiting for a newbie to make a comment so they can perform a feeding frenzy.

A few years ago, my sister told me about joining an Opera group on Facebook. According to her, she made an innocent comment, and everyone pounced on her. She was shaken by the experience, because she has an extensive knowledge of opera. I didn’t understand why this happened until now.

Why do FB groups propagate this crazy behavior? Are the people who join groups already crazy? Or does being a group member generate deranged tribal behavior?

I wondered if groups centered on the arts attract irritable snobs. But a friend told me her Laundry Tips group was nuts too. This is kind of exciting, actually, and tempts me to join a million groups, to observe how petty and hostile they are.

I learned this shit the hard way by commenting in a group called “Victorian Images”. I rarely look at it but I did yesterday. There was a sepia photo of a stiff little child standing on a chair, as her mother knelt at her side. Stupidly, I commented that it looked like a postmortem photo. It seemed obvious, in fact, that it was a postmortem photo.

Before I knew it, everyone commented on my ignorance, some angry, some mocking. It was incredible. It was death by a thousand cuts. One person exclaimed that I wouldn’t be “satisfied unless there was a Dead Victorian Baby”. I suggested that they were acting nuts, and conceded that I might have been wrong.

So I posted the image on my own page, and got a unanimous vote that the baby was dead. So I went back to the group and said the baby was totally fucking dead, quoting Monty Python, etc etc.

Now, everyone knows that neighborhood groups are contentious, except for their hatred of the homeless, but I just had no idea about other groups. Why don’t these nutcases take their fury to Twitter, where the action is? Are they pussies, only brave enough to vent in a private FB group?

While I have a deep disregard for trolls, I’ve decided to become one on Facebook. Everyone hates me anyway so why not? At least I can have some fun. I read a thing about losing weight in my Sisters AARP newsletter for Black women. It asked me to list ten things that made me feel good, besides eating. TEN, are they kidding? I could only think of 4. You try it.

Well, now I can add trolling to my list, for a total of five things. Yay, me.

When did it become a human right to broadcast yourself around the world in real time? If it’s not a right, then let’s admit that humanity is not capable of using this technology responsibly.

You may love the feeling of being a superstar when you go on Facebook Live to talk about your pet peeves or your make-up tips, but the value of that doesn’t come close to the harm generated by live-streamed suicide, torture and murder.

The murder in Cleveland on Sunday was blown up into a huge news story because it was posted on Facebook, whereas brutal, senseless murders take place across America every single day. The most notable thing about the event is that it remained on Facebook for several hours.

I don’ t want to see live murders on Facebook, and I don’t want you to see them either. I don’t want to see torture or rape on Facebook, and I don’t want you to see them either. It is not your right to see these activities. These events are traumatic. It is possible to be traumatized over and over, not just once. Trauma doesn’t work that way.

The fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhhol predicted did not refer to live-streaming your stupid life to your cyber-friends. No one could have predicted that it would come to this, that people would mediate every experience and thought through their cellphone. Life is OUT THERE, not in your phone or on Facebook.

But young people who have grown up with the internet are increasingly unable to conduct their lives offline. Everything that matters to them involves their wi-fi connection. And when they are overwhelmed and suicidal, they turn to Facebook Live.

Facebook acknowledges that live-streamed suicide is a problem, but they aren’t willing to give out numbers. There are at least 7 known cases since Facebook went live last year. Mark Zuckerberg pledged to find new ways to tackle this in a recent letter to Facebook users:

“There have been terribly tragic events — like suicides, some live streamed — that perhaps could have been prevented if someone had realized what was happening and reported them sooner.”

Suicide has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years. Suicide is devastating for the people who witness it, and could encourage others who are struggling to attempt it, too, says Dan Romer, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

But Facebook has its own suicide ‘researcher’, who insists that

“…cutting off the stream too early removes the chance of someone being able to reach out and provide help. In this way, Live becomes a lifeline. It opens up the opportunity for people to reach out for support and for people to give support at this time that’s critically important.”

God, what self-serving fuckers. They will never give an inch, because their stated mission is that everyone will do everything via their platform: chat, shop, argue, order pizza, make friends, kill yourself and maybe each other.

There are reasons why people want to carry out momentous acts in front of a public audience, and none of those reasons are healthy. The urge to watch these acts might be attributed to “human nature” but human nature is changing. Kids didn’t use to make videos of gang rapes for the amusement of their friends. Kids used to feel horrified by things that are horrifying. Desensitization is a real thing.

Facebook is criminal in its practices, as we all know. Selling data, promoting fake news,  discouraging face to face contact, and broadcasting rape, torture and violent death…it is the fucking devil.

The less you participate, the less power it will have to drag humanity down to zero.

In just one day, I have received threats of physical violence and an actual curse, both transmitted over the Internet.

Now, I am fully aware of having myself generated enough hostility online to light up several baseball stadiums if not an entire city.

But it’s interesting how loosely words are used these days when launched digitally; it’s as if everyone is on the brink of a nervous breakdown, exploding with unmediated anger at the drop of a hat.

Here’s an email from one of my half-sisters, who is around 22 and who I barely know:

Bitch let’s talk face to face and see if you will say anything to my face? Your old as hell and if I am pregnant and your harrassing me well I can send my friend to go see you and make sure you never bother me again time and place Joann to meet up if you don’t want to meet up keep your pussy mouth closed. Emails are pathetic lets meet up your so tough let’s see how really tough you are.

Naturally, I came back with ‘Blah blah blah restraining order.’

My family! Can’t kill ’em, can’t have them killed!

Meanwhile, over on Facebook, I posted a link to a story about the Eagles of Death Metal, performing this week in Tel Aviv. I saluted them for their fearlessness. I know I don’t have to explain what I meant by that, so I won’t insult your intelligence.

This started a spirited exchange about Israelis and Palestinians.

People went back and forth, citing their feelings, which grew heated, and before too long Jews were called Nazis. You probably know how this goes. Is there a Godwin’s Law adage about how any conversation not supportive of boycotting Israel results in the comparison of Jews with Nazis? Or is this just an example of Godwin’s Law?

I want an adage called Wolf’s Law!

How about this for Wolf’s Law: ‘Anything typed and sent into cyberspace will likely result in threats or insults.’

Back to the Facebook thread, here’s what an otherwise lovely person commented:

A greater collection of self serving morons I have never read before…
stay in your ivory towers …may one day ….what you dismiss in your
foolish judgements of the teller ..may in rain on you
the blood of innocence to be your eternal stain …

Because I gave props to the Eagles of Death Metal??

I don’t want an eternal stain, I’m a fucking Jew, alright? Maybe I should get a business card that states this.

Thoughts on Internet hostility? Or ideas for Wolf’s Law?

Art by (c) Beth Hoeckel

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I was so touched when three separate people sent me links to these stupid cowboy boot thongs. I thought, “Aww, how lovely, when people see grotesque shoes, they think of me!”

But when I read the text, I learned that the boots are the work of some smartass self-styled redneck who’s managed to make a splash on social media with his stupid faux product.

In other words, these boots are not found art like shoes that someone actually considered attractive and wearable. Instead, these fucking boot-things are ironic, get it?

We don’t need ironic ugly things, we’re already drowning in sincere ugly things! Fake ugly things bring no frisson of joy.

This guy’s Facebook page does not indicate what he intends to do with his new fame or whether we can expect other shoe-jokes in the future. But I can only hold him in contempt for intentionally fucking up a pair of boots, and for thinking he could design anything as innocently hideous as these ‘Open-toe Chrystal Boxer Booties’ by Giuseppe Zanotti.

Facebook has responded to a petition by eliminating the status option of ‘feeling fat.’

If only I’d known about this option! And now it’s gone, thanks to political correctness.

The Change.org petition said this:

Did you know that Facebook lets you tell all your friends just how much you hate your body?

Uh-oh, body hatred! Make it stop!

And this:

Having these word choices completely normalizes using derogatory descriptive terms in the place of real feelings. How can a person feel ‘fat’ or ‘ugly’ when these aren’t actually feelings?” …What’s worse is that these adjectives are judgmental and forced on us by society to make women (and increasingly men) feel negatively about their otherwise healthy bodies!

Well, Facebook is sorry and never again will it allow us to fat-shame our own selves. Here’s the Facebook statement:

We’ve heard from our community that listing “feeling fat” as an option for status updates could reinforce negative body image, particularly for people struggling with eating disorders. So we’re going to remove “feeling fat” from the list of options. We’ll continue to listen to feedback as we think about ways to help people express themselves on Facebook.

I’m going to call bullshit on this and I don’t expect a single person to agree with me. But still, this is a disturbing trend. It’s not good to censor feelings, and fat is indeed a feeling, no matter what any petition says.

I feel fat RIGHT NOW. I’m not actually fat but I feel fat. I also feel guilty much of the time. I feel depressed most days and often angry, too. Naming these feelings  actually makes me  feel better. I know that I don’t need to live in denial, that self-expression is healthy and liberating.

Positivity is nice but shouldn’t be enforced by word police. Fat-shaming is a big deal at the moment but it’s a made-up problem created by scolds, overly sensitive crybabies who think Everyone Is Beautiful even though we’re not all beautiful.

At the same time experts are urging people to talk about mental illness to dispel the stigma, Facebook is now telling us we can’t confess to feeling fat.

Fuckers. Fascists. Fat-phobic fascist fuckers.

P.S. You can’t ‘feel ugly’ anymore on Facebook, either. Because, I don’t know, it’s mean to people struggling with ugliness issues.

As I write this, we still don’t know what caused the death of poor Peaches Geldof but we are human, most of us, so we feel the tragedy. For me, it was yet another trigger, a blast of PTSD, complete with unwanted images of her dead body, what position she was in, wondering how her family will live through this. Looking at pictures of her adorable babies, reading her loving descriptions of them, struggling with the very idea of deliberately leaving them.

She is none of my business but I refreshed my google search for news, every few hours. Just like I did with L’Wren Scott. How dare these people leave their loved ones, how dare they leave strangers like me to wonder in horror at the big hole they left, to feel like the last page of a book was torn out before we could know how it ended.

I wish I could stop taking it personally but such is my PTSD or Complicated Grief or whatever pathology can be assigned to my condition.

In the days leading up to Max’s birthday, I was more anxious than I realized. I had a fight with my sister over plans for his birthday dinner. Weeks have passed but she still won’t talk to me.

In the days following his birthday, I felt better. I could feel him inside me, not like a dark companion this time but like part of my heart, myself, a good part. I felt lighter, I guess.

But nope, I was not really okay. I sent a curt email in the middle of the night to a close friend’s husband, who knew Max. In the morning, the friend emailed me, hysterically blaming me for destroying the husband and being a monster.

Stung at being the monster in someone else’s narrative, I debated this in escalating emails that resulted in her blocking me both on facebook and in real life gmail. Now I am officially a monster who would dare to make someone feel uncomfortable about Max’s suicide. And I have lost a friend. Maybe they would like to file a restraining order.

I have already suffered the shock of a restraining order! The fiance who refused to talk to me filed a restraining order, citing a fear for her life. It did not pan out, obviously, but it is the post post-modern way of telling someone to shut up or else.

If I could file a restraining order against myself, I would. I would accuse me of torturing myself when I least expect it, with waves of anger, remorse, and morbid preoccupations. I could make me stay 100 yards away from myself and my place of employment.

Meanwhile, one of my facebook friends, needless to say a complete stranger, told me that she was depressed today, more than usual, and wants me to call her. She has a physical handicap and that must be hard. I don’t want to take this on but I will, because even though I’m a monster in real life, on facebook I’m still a nice and compassionate person. For now, anyway.

I have been spending more and more time on Facebook, and learning how it substitutes for actually living your life.

People who hang out there are losers, like me, or else they’d be doing something out in the world. They wouldn’t need to share every thought or meal or wisecrack with a bunch of imaginary friends.

I noticed this a few weeks ago when I spent hours chatting with a complete stranger, based on a shared taste in art and books. I tried to ignore his increasing references to asses. He liked big asses. Which was fine with me, up to a point. After a while, apropos of something, I told him about Max.

He expressed dismay and then excitedly started a list of other people with dead children. He had an impressive fluency here, even throwing in Paul Newman.

I said goodbye and blocked him. But it was my own fault for buying into the imaginary friend illusion propagated by Facebook and all “social media” I guess.

Still, I enjoyed looking at the pictures people posted and I often laughed out loud at conversations with my new imaginary friends. One of them even sent me a package of vintage gloves! She is really smart and miserable: a good description of many of my real life friends, too.

I also enjoy jumping into debates, usually without much consequence.

Tonight, I was upset when one Facebook person I really like expressed his despair over a friend’s death. Lots of people commented on his ‘status’, some offering words of condolence. Others wanted to point out that they had experienced things just as bad or worse. I could see it turning into a competition. I struggled to keep my opinions to myself, even when someone posted a depressing Leonard Cohen song in this thread, as if Leonard Cohen is a good antidote to despair.

Then, someone posted a video of the song “People Who Died” by Jim Carroll. If you don’t know it, it’s a litany of the writer’s dead friends.

I stupidly commented, “I don’t think this is useful, with all due respect.”

This was greeted with righteous fury that devolved into a whole back and forth where I politely apologized but the woman got madder and madder. Her friends jumped in to call me names. One of them said “People are fucking unbelievable!” and a million people liked his comment…including the original “friend” I was defending.

Ooooooooooh, right? When a gang of imaginary people go off  on you, it’s a singular experience like no other. You can smell the feeding frenzy, which takes on a life of its own. It has nothing to do with anything you actually said or did. It’s just people feeling exhilarated by getting to gang up on someone.

I have already payed my dues with malicious strangers. But thank god something happened to steer me away from the tragic black hole that is Facebook.

Last night, I stayed up until dawn after taking in too much suffering. I am trying to learn tonglen, a method of breathing in suffering and breathing out compassion, but I forgot. I forgot, and found myself dwelling on my own misery.

Earlier in the day, I wrote a letter to someone whose partner killed himself. Later in the day, I answered an email from a man whose depressed wife has taken to her bed, leaving him with two jobs and the care of their children. Then I read about the mother who killed her 14 year old autistic son, incurring the understandable wrath of the disability community and beyond.

So many problems and so many tragic circumstances with no easy solutions. It’s overwhelming. You have to do something, though, right?

I have a bunch of Facebook “friends” who I don’t know in real life. I acquire them for the usual reasons. One of them, Jon, had an accident a few weeks ago that left him paralyzed in a wheelchair and unable to keep his apartment. His story triggered memories of Max’s despair over his injuries.

I was determined to help Jon. I noticed that he had more than 1,000 Facebook friends. He is a political activist and provokes lively discussion on his Facebook page. So I posted my idea on his page: I exhorted Jon’s friends to each make a $5 donation to his Paypal account. What a great idea, I thought proudly! I felt deeply satisfied by my plan to rescue this person in need.

Jon received four donations, including mine.

He was okay with it, but I was horrified. I couldn’t get over it. Five dollars?? Wouldn’t anybody give five dollars to a human being in such difficult circumstances? What the fuck is wrong with people?

I’m upset by indifference, even though I’m guilty of it all the time. I would like to see more compassion. Coincidentally, I just came across this study in how compassion and kindness can be taught and developed, literally changing the brain in the process.

More kindness would be great. The messages I’ve received from strangers who read my blog have often brought me to tears, just because kindness seems like such a meaningful gift. When we breathe in each other’s suffering and breathe out compassion, we are all that much closer to healing the unbearable pain of being human.

*photo (c) Nandini Valli Muthiah

Spending most of his last 6 months in bed, Max starting using Facebook, and sent friend requests to everyone else who had his name. He was so pleased by the visual effect of Max Wolf leaving a comment for Max Wolf. He told me he’d started a Facebook group called People Named Max Wolf.   I loved this; it was so Max of him to think of this.

I didn’t even look at that page until after he died. I love the purpose of the group – “Exploring what it means to be a Max Wolf.”   I love that all those Max Wolf’s were able to appreciate   his gentle wit.   As a tribute to Max, I sent 37 friend requests to Facebook users who share my name. Only one of them accepted.

No one had a mind quite like Max’s. One of his college professors once wrote, “I am always eager to know what Max has to say.” I think all of us felt that way.

Sometime I wonder what he would think about something and I try to hear his voice. The one thing I can hear distinctly is that he forgives me. I don’t know why this is and I know how self-serving it seems but it’s still true.   And when I play the CD mixes he made for me, I feel his love.   I hope more than anything that he can still feel mine.

Sometimes I forget that people aren’t always what they seem to be online. Even more often, I forget that people don’t always look how they look online. We all get lucky in some photos and less lucky in others. A few genetic freaks of nature look amazing from every angle, in every light. But not most of us.

Here’s a really unflattering picture of me, taken last November after I tripped over a curb and broke my hip. Ordinarily I’d rather die than post it, but I need it to illustrate my point. (On the bright side, you can see my O.J. Simpson Trading Cards in the background.)

At Sea of Shoes, for example, you will never see a photo of Sea’s behind. And she’s announced many times that she looks for “volume” in clothes. She knows how to conceal her weaker areas and play up the stronger ones.

This photo confirms that Sea has to work hard to get those glowing portraits she posts! It’s the magic of a $2,000 Nikon and the right lighting.

People remind me over and over that someone’s online persona may be nothing like their real self. When I told my sister about one of my dearest cyber-friends, she exclaimed, “How do you know that anything they say is true?!” Her cynicism upset me. I just assume I can discern a genuine personality from a manufactured one.

Recently I read this essay by Zadie Smith on “The Social Network” and Facebook, and it blew my mind. I can’t recommend it highly enough! The notion that we may be learning to limit our actual selves by the way we shape our own “brands” online is really thought provoking. It disturbs me.

My own online presence is a little disturbing to me.   People know too much about me.   I’m open about my whole life. I may regret it, but I can’t think why, since I’ll never run for president or seek a corporate job. But I can at least say that I’m not presenting a fake or even well-edited version of who I am.   I think I’m exactly what I seem like. But maybe a tiny bit less of a cunt.