Facing Away From Facebook; No Text, No Chat

IN THE YEAR 2000, inspired by the new millennium which was set to begin in the year 2001, I bought a computer, or rather, my mother bought one for me. It cost five hundred dollars, and had an eight gig hard drive and sixty four megs of R.A.M.. Rather primitive, rather expensive. I was told that AOL was the only way to go, so I went, into the chatrooms, the social media of the day. For me that lasted about five years, during which time I, like millions of others, spent way too much time online. Chatrooms faded away beginning in about 2005, replaced by Facebook and others. Today chatrooms are somewhat of a relic, too bad in a way, because they were fun, or could be. People got tired of all the acrimony, just as they are now beginning to do with Facebook , Twitter, and all the rest. I am told that Facebook and Twitter are increasingly acrimonious, and I believe it. People will get tired of that. In all likelihood our current modes of social media are fads, and will fade away, to be replaced by some future fad. I never got involved in the current forms; the chatroom experience cured me. I sense that when people join Facebook they consider themselves to be "customers" of Facebook. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Facebook's customers are all multi billion dollar corporations who purchase from Facebook advertising space and personal information, primarily shopping preferences, about tens of millions of members. And what, if not customers, are the members? They, dear reader, are the product. They are the goods and services, sitting on the shelf, voluntarily awaiting their sale to the billionaires. I have been told by people that "the best way to contact me is through Facebook or text messaging." Although nobody who says this ever bothers to ask me, I offer in return that the best way to reach me is to pick up a telephone and press numbers with thumbs, or to use snail mail. Those who text do nothing else, it seems. I never get phone calls or letters on paper. "I tried to text you", people say to me. "Keep on trying", I respond, "and try harder". I'll wait for the next fad, then decide what to do about it. I might ignore it.