As Mark Zuckerberg prepares for another day of Congressional testimony, many Americans are asking themselves if it was really such a great idea to voluntarily sign up for an online panopticon to begin with. Unfortunately, Facebook is so integrated into our daily lives now that outright quitting seems unthinkable. But as this PSA from Conan O’Brien shows, you don’t have to change your lifestyle just because you gave up Facebook. Most of the things you’ve come to love can still be done in real life, from keeping up with people you barely know to broadcasting your political opinions to people who don’t want to hear them.
The sketch gets at a larger truth about Facebook: Even before getting into the privacy issues, most of what people use it for ranges from the pointless to the outright creepy. Earlier generations do not seem to have felt a great sense of loss because they weren’t able to get into inane political debates with high school acquaintances who turned out to be racists. Nor did they spend a lot of time wondering what their co-workers were eating for lunch or wishing they could give their food choices a thumbs-up. But that little dopamine hit from receiving a “like” or satisfying your curiosity about the current life of someone you parted ways with many years ago is a difficult addiction to kick, even when it’s clear that you’re using the technology to do things you’d never contemplate wasting your time on in real life. Maybe we should all quit Facebook and take up smoking.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
