It’s day four of the Facebook Crisis. I’m grateful to be logging in here and documenting this. I mean, not everyone has access to the internet, right? So far, I’m surviving. I ate no breakfast today, but I’m not sure I have any weight loss to show for it.
The habit of looking at the Facebook app on my iPhone is still a hard habit to break. I remind myself that my self-worth is not tied up in how many likes one of my posts got or how many followers or friend requests I get. I know these things, but I’m not immune to the dopamine hits that I get when these numbers are up.
Not that anyone will or should feel sorry for me, but I do feel like throwing a pity party — truly in the hopes that a Facebook executive will drive by the party, see it, stop, come in, listen, empathize, and reverse the disabled account status.
I don’t need facebook to survive, but I’ve probably engaged with it daily for 17 years straight. I joined in May of 2007, mostly to promote my then business, HM Magazine. I promoted myself, too, as I’ve always been upfront and authentic about who I am. I’m silly, irreverent, reverent, and serious — about God, family, music, and life.
I think I know why my account was disabled. A couple weeks ago there were several memes floating around that highlighted a female boxer at the Paris Olympics that was defeated by a transgendered male competing as a female. I think I commented with a question: “Do they think we have dog poop for brains?” Before I hit the post button or maybe after I tapped it once, I remember seeing a message that said it violated Facebook community standards. I thought, ‘They’ve got to be kidding,’ and hit the post button. A couple weeks later I get a WE DISABLED YOUR ACCOUNT message. It could have nothing to do with that. I hope that’s the case, because a dog poop comment is pretty innocuous, don’t you think?
But if it’s not that, is there really a question about my identity? There should be no reason for that. I don’t know of any fake Doug VP facebook accounts out there.
Below the disabled account message was an APPEAL button. I selected appeal and was instructed to upload a photo ID. This made sense in the context of an “account integrity and authentic identity” situation. My driver’s license image that I keep on my hard drive for occasional needs did not work, even after multiple tries. I was leary about uploading my Passport, but all this interaction was on the secure (https) facebook website, so I went and found it, scanned it, and uploaded it. Whew! I thought that would settle it. I’ve never pretended to be someone I’m not. This photo ID proves it. Case closed, right?
No, instead I get the message shown below. “You cannot request another review of this decision.” What? How unfair? Where’s the reasonable decision-making? I don’t know if a robot does this fact-checking and they only acknowledge certain pre-determined data or what (my passport is active), but this is kind of maddening.
Not sure what to do. But I do know that God is good. I know that there is a life without Facebook. I joined the social media platform in May of 2007, so it’s been a part of my daily life for 17+ years now. I initially started it to promote HM Magazine and I shared both personal news and updates as well as all types of Christian hard music information. I had my Twitter account linked to my Facebook account, so back in the day I would tweet any and pretty much every news item, as well as comments from live shows, etc. I’d go nuts at a festival, tweeting about several sets as they were happening. They all showed up as Facebook posts, too. It seemed to be helping promote and grow and “connect” the magazine with its audience. I liked it. I quickly amassed 5,000 friends, which is the limit for a personal account, so I had to look through my friends list for those false or unused friends with no profile photo or image, delete them, and then add a new friend in response to a request.
If I somehow get back on Facebook, you won’t notice much of a change. I think I’ll add a trusted user (like my wife) to the account so that I might have access to it if it ever got disabled again.
If I have to live without Facebook for the rest of my life, I’ll be okay.
Comments