Marked Safe from Facebook, January 9, 2025

Gather round, girls and boys. Let me tell you a story … Once upon a time there was a world without Facebook. (Children gasp.) Friends, families and complete strangers stayed in touch with one another …

“How is that possible?” the children ask.

“Well, they emailed each other.”

“What’s email?”

“Don’t interrupt me, little ones. Anyway, they had blogs and websites and even email lists, and they called each other on the telephone.”

“What’s a telephone?”

“… It was a different world, some say a better world, although that’s debatable. But imagine it, girls and boys, a world where human beings communicated, and anyone you called a friend was really a friend.”

“In real life?”

“Yes!”

“What’s real life?” asked one child.

“It may not matter anymore. It’s almost gone. But some of us are trying to preserve the old languages and the old ways. So think about it, children. Imagine it if you can. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

And that is my story. If you’re my friend in real life, you can find me lots of other places: Mark McNease. com, Mark McNease on Topic Substack, Your Write Path. com, LGBTSR. com. Bluesky for now. And all three websites have subscriber lists. You can even email me! It’s amazing how much more real communication goes on with my friends who have never been on social media.

Where you will not find me again is on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has decided that it’s okay to call people like me ‘mentally ill,’ and now that Elon Musk is openly using the word ‘retarded,’ we can look forward to that becoming popular again. Won’t that be fun, girls and boys? I can’t wait!

To my friends and family, if our relationships are worth the effort, they’re worth a text or an email or a phone call. The old languages, the old ways. Before they’re gone completely.