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 even bother with my traditional cull of people who couldn't even be arsed to wish me a happy birthday on my birthday, even though there's a birthday section in the corner of the screen, 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. 

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, and they're not invested in me enough to wave at me on my birthday. A year ago, I would have got rid of them. Five years ago, definitely. But 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. Like I'm crawling through a desert and the only person you ever encounter is Donald Trump on a camel every three feet, as you slalom through discarded Just For Men packets and soft cock medicine for sad grandpas. It's shit. 

And yet. 

It was always shit. 

My awful face

Or 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 allows me to see that 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 what horror film I was watching. I mean, the smallness, the quotidian dullness is sort of 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, 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 it would be 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. I gave up posting pictures of my face. It's not worth it. People call you fat, ugly, bald, old or, if you actually look okay, accuse you of using photoshop, filters, Industrial Light and Magic. I mean, it's just men, isn't it? That's how they crack on. Banter. What they call "sleggin'". 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 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. You will be 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 60s, holding a big fish in their status photos, insulting Dua Lipa's looks on social media. They "wouldn't", Dua. I know you're heartbroken. 

I should be inured to it, and I should have been across the decades. But I wasn't. And I'm not. And I don't actually have to do this. I've been making a rod for my own back, sac and crack, and I find myself increasingly disinclined to do so. And you know what? You'll not miss me.