Disinclined.

 I seem to finally be weaning myself off of social media. I no longer feel a compulsion to share my every thought with 700 odd people on Facebook, some of whom may be buildings or bands. Some of whom are definitely dead. I didn't bother with my traditional cull of people who couldn't be arsed to wish me a happy birthday, even though there's a birthday emoji in the corner of the screen all day, so you can't blame the algorithm this time. One in seven of my Facebook "friends" went to the effort of pressing the automated greeting button. Though, as I say, some of them are dead. So they're off the hook. 

But I didn't do the cull. I couldn't be bothered. I'm not even invested enough in this platform to discard haters in a fit of pique. A year ago, I'd have culled 'em all. Five years ago I'd have gone round their houses.  

Haters is probably a bit strong. Not-giving-a-shitters, then. 

Facebook has devolved into a friendless wasteland of rolling adverts, sponsored content, the excesses of Trump, the concomitant entreaties to "let that sink in", and just no one you know, ever. It's like going into town without a plan. I never see anyone. There's no one about. I'm crawling through a desert, and the only person I ever encounter is Donald Trump on a camel, every three feet, vomiting feces, as I slalom through discarded Just For Men packets and soft cock medicine for sad grandpas. It's shit. 

I wake up in the morning and log on and go, ooh, ten new notifications, ten of my friends are reaching out to me. What a lovely start to the day. But no. The notifications are three people I barely know adding to their "story". Talking Pictures TV also added to their story. Someone has shared the Cedar Foundation's post. Someone else has shared several stories about Donald Trump saying moronic things, doing reprehensible things, saying nonfactual things. These are not my notifications. They're not meant for me. They're meant for everybody. There is no reason for Facebook to flag them as messages for me. My ten friends have not thought of me at all. It's shit. 

And yet. 

It was always shit. 

My awful face

Certainly, my experience of it was. Facebook has a "memories" section, allowing you to travel back in time and see what you were saying a decade ago. And it shows me to I've been trying to be amusing and charming on Facebook for well over a decade. Day after day I'd be typing up some sunny vignette about walking around Belfast, or a comical mix up in Winemark, or which horror film I was watching. I mean, the smallness, the quotidian dullness is the point. It's observational, relatable, human. I'm every human, it's all in me. Occasionally, I'll release a book or a film or a play, and that will be an unusual thing, but mostly its Pooterish footling, all my modest mundanities presented in a self-deprecating manner, with me perennially wrong-footed, forever the butt of the joke. 

And without fail one of my friends would call me a dick for it. They'd line up. Often, the insult would be unrelated to the post. It would just be a personal slight. Or feigned outrage that I'd posted about something fatuous and silly while there were terrible things going on in the world, if I would only remove my head from my arse. Don't you know people are dying? How is your post about an advert you don't like or a tricky situation with a frosty grocer supposed to save the world? 

Well, quite. I can see how it wont. 

I gave up posting pictures of my face. It's not worth it. People just call you fat, ugly, bald, old or, if you actually look okay because of the lighting, accuse you of using photoshop, filters, Industrial Light and Magic. I mean, it's just men, isn't it? Women don't normally call me an ugly arsehole, but the men love it. That's how they crack on. Banter. What they call "sleggin'", in Northern Ireland, a land apparently free of mirrors and an interior life. A woman posts a "felt cute might delete later" selfie, and her friends queue up to call her beautiful. If a man has the temerity to even appear in a photo, tagged, or unawares, or posed in black and white like Dollar, his friends will point out, forensically, each grotesque distortion, every anomalous sag or swelling: the fork-scarred forehead, the grizzled, depleted, defeated hair. It's good for the pack. Everyone should be put back in their place, insulted into submission regardless of the looks of the person doing the roasting. Its the same lack of self-awareness that sees men in their 60's, holding a big fish in their status photos, insulting Dua Lipa's looks on social media. They "wouldn't do", Dua. I know she's heartbroken. Put down the fish, Alan. Get off the motorbike, Hydrate, brush your teeth. Moisturiser? Polyfilla, more like it. 

I should be inured to it, and should have been across the decades. But I wasn't. And I'm not. And I don't actually have to do this. Showing up. Spaffing glorious content for free, pearls of wisdom before swine. I feel like psychotic looksmaxxer, Clavicular, repeatedly hammering myself in the face day after day. It hasn't made me prettier. I've been making a rod for my own back, sac and crack, and I find I'm increasingly disinclined to do so. 

And you'll not miss me.