The last 24 hours have felt exhausting, apocalyptic, and affirming, equal parts toxic and tranquil, which I guess you could say is pretty much... a normal start to October (or if we’re really getting into it Mercury in retrograde (strap in for chaos until Oct. 18.)
..Not that I believe in any of that stuff. Not that I believe in anything, mind you. But, something about it tracks, so...
Case in point, somebody tripped over the cord at Facebook, and all of a sudden, the shiny, endless scroll of hate rhythms in the palms of 2.89 billion people worldwide was gone.
Just like that. All the twisted-faced white wellness/marketing yellers, all the top Christian Mom researchers of bad information sent straight to them by Eastern Bloc server farms, all the plump-lipped and stuck-out-ass shake influencers, fucking gone. Denuded, rendered obsolete. Their insufferable rhetoric and glorious run shoved somewhere into the dark ether of nothing, with nothing left in their wake.
There would be no mystery box in the attic to uncover the work or the damage we’ve done to this democracy and life on this planet through the continued harangue of solipsism manifest. Even if it’s just photos of your food, you’re certainly still up to no good. And it was disappeared, and it was glorious.
I quit Facebook in 2016, and not just because I’d let all my animals die in Farmville. I went cold turkey after phone canvassing for Hillary Clinton one morning. I remember it well. It was about a week till we took to the polls, and she still had a double-digit lead.
Canvassing was my way of “doing my part” (mostly so I could say I did my part regardless of the outcome.)
I logged on, and they had me phoning up registered Democrats in greater Phoenix. Most were hang-ups or “no thanks” before I could get through the intro of the script. But to a person, those who I got on the line said some version of “I may vote for Him or not at all; I can’t vote for Her.”
Even though you’re supposed to just give an encouraging prefabricated statement and hang up, on a couple of my last calls, I asked why.
And then it started. A firehose of misinformation came back at me. Everything from a version of Her Emails, to She’s a Lizard Person, to Trump’s going to get everyone an Xbox... I got. It was; how should I say this? Really really fucked.
I mean, most (all) of the reasons people weren’t voting for Hillary had nothing to do with politics or policy, but beyond that, none of them were rooted in truth or anything that resembled any kind of reality we actually live in. It was like the Weekly World News attached to people's faces like an Alien and impregnated their brains.
Nope, all this mind-blowing information did not come from the pages of the Arizona Republic or the Phoenix New Times, or any of the half-dozen local TV news stations. Nope. These people got this whole thing from Facebook.
There was, in other words, no limit to what people can believe and no end to this fact-free and society-killing spree.
So I quit the platform.
Am I better for it? Absolutely. Sometimes though (all the time) I’m reminded our nation and the world continues to get worse, by small measures and by leaps and bounds, because of this pixilated evil delivered with slot machine technology; a thousand tiny serotonin bursts as you try to process all the real dangers around you (an endless pandemic, climate disaster, the insufferable HBO Max user experience.)
Yes, Facebook fills a utilitarian void, especially in the vast news deserts it is at least partially responsible for creating in this country. Local, regional, and national governing bodies and emergency services networks rely on it to disseminate actual accurate information (please don’t read the comments) and, as one friend steeped in regulation commented, “should be broken up and treated as a utility.”
But the rest of it is harmful, insufferable dreck and needs to be shuttered immediately, or else we'll all soon be a memory as distant as what happened yesterday.
517 Camino Del Cielo Taos, NM 87571
Taos is such a palette cleanser, and I’m not sure why it’s not ...more of a thing.
There is (still) a relatively low population, lots of groundwater (about 87 percent of New Mexico’s supply comes from the ground, for high and dry Taos Plateau (elevation 6,969) it’s slightly more than that.)
The big, wide-open high desert landscapes and endless sky are basically from a fever dream of what life is like when you’ve given up all pretense of grinding it out in a metro and set about the task of painting Kokopellis on ceramic mugs burned in your backyard kiln.
Yes, you get into the of New Mexico cities, and it’s a Fentanyl-fueled nightmare, but here, amongst the living cacti and skittering desert snakes, birds, and ground critters, up in the air so rarified it seems a place that is detached from the current realities (and actual plague) that plague us. No wonder the aliens stop off here so much.
A twenty-minute drive is Taos Ski Valley, the crispest “hero” snow in the nation. The resort, founded in 1955 by skiing pioneer Ernie Blake, was sold to billionaire hedge funder and land baron Louis Bacon in 2016 but thus far, it remains a skiing haven for mostly dirtbags and the occasional asshole who flies in private.
It’s the least-bougie of all the remaining ski resorts in the West, most of which are now either owned by private equity or megalocorp Vail Resorts.
So get your turns in while you can, or simply step up to this three-bedroom slightly-too-sprawling perch that comes complete with themed exterior and Bachelorette pavers; log-off, and just ramble around the thousands of acres of Forest Service land at your literal doorstep. Or wring your hands and wait for things to never go back to normal as society flips the Open sign around to permanently closed and boards up the windows.
Here, your shutters will still be thrown wide open, letting the natural light in.
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