There's a lot of talk about social media right now. About how we compare our outtakes and bloopers to the highlight reels that are everyone else's timelines. I can't help but think there's something to this, because many people do seem to treat Facebook as an ornament, a little pretty bauble to share and enhance the reputation. 

I didn't always live here, you know. For the first six years, I felt less than zero obligation to post every day, and for probably three of those years I was virtually unknowable, for all the lack of substance I posted. I didn't post pictures: at first I didn't know how, and once I did it still didn't appeal to me. Pictures alone usually don't. There's that babyish voice inside that insists picture books are for babies and none of the literary greats you revere wrote comic books and arrogant wrongheaded shit like that. But there's also suspicion: if you show me a picture, I'll wonder what's just outside its frame. You can, of course, likewise hide things and spotlight things with words: any writer worth anything at all knows umpteen ways of doing both. But with pictures it always feels more blatant..with moving pictures, even more so. 

Do you remember, back when TV "channels" were a thing, how some movies would be presented on your television as if you were in a Movie theater? Except not really, because in every movie theater I've ever been in, the movie takes up the whole screen. On your TV, this "letterboxing" technique renders two thirds of your screen area unwatchable. And there were people who preferred this, who insisted it was the only right and proper way to watch a film. (Never a movie, always a film: these are the same people who never took a shit in their lives, but only evacuated their bowels). 

Anyway, for the first several years I was here, this place was Twitter to me. Today, Facebook asks "What's on your mind?" In days of yore, it said "Ken is..." and I always resented it for forcing me to start my sentence in the middle of the sentence.  I mean, look at the opening to this blog. It would never work on Facebook circa 2008.  I couldn't very well perpetrate something like "Ken is in the last two weeks:" and put it out there on my wall where people could see it and judge me for it. And yes, that thought went through my head every...single..time I thought about sharing something. Can I contort whatever it is I want to say into Facebook's one and only arbitrary status update format? If it presented any issues at all, I didn't bother. 

But as I got my bearings and found more and more friends, I began to notice something. Many people use Facebook as a kind of event recorder: today we went here, ate this, did that. Nothing wrong with that at all, of course. But few people seemed to be interested in deeper discussions, and their walls did feel somewhat antiseptic. It's not as if I'm in an all-fired rush to share all my biggest flaws, but when they pop up -- and they do -- it feels like a lie to hide them. 

I used to be a chronic liar, once. I lied because duh, the truth hurt. But my mom always used to say that I'd get in ten times more trouble with a lie than I would with an unpleasant truth. Mom was full of it on some things -- there is no reason whatsoever to wait half an hour after eating to swim -- but on this she was 100% right. I pledged to myself to tell the truth on social media, even when it made me look bad -- perhaps especially when it made me look bad. There are several good reasons for that. One, it's authentic. Fakeness just doesn't appeal to me: it never did. Cut the small talk. I want to know about your dreams, your fears, your proudest moments and your most embarrassing moments both. I want to know your thoughts on where you were before you were born and where you'll be after you die, if anywhere. You know, the real stuff. 

Two, being real opens you up to other real people, and there is no greater joy I've found. 

Three, it's easier to keep the story straight when there's only one story and it's true (or at least, true from your perspective: my dad once said that the number of sides in any story equals the number of people in the story plus the truth.)

And four, it just feels right to me to present myself as I am, warts and all. 

A word about reactions.

I have always had to convince people, over time, that I have no expectations. I have desires, sure, and when I'm not careful they can look for all the world like expectations, but they're not. This is true in things both large and small: you don't have to say I love you back if I say it to you and you don't have to "like" or respond to what I post. Would I love it if you did love me back, or if you did laugh at my silly pun and leave a nice comment? Of course I would. Anybody who says their Facebook wall is only for them is lying: nobody ever wakes up of a morning and say you know what? Everything I post today is going to lose me friends. Does that obligate you? Hell, no.

Of course I don't share everything.

I've ran this blog round and round in my head and I can't think of a way to prove what I'm about to write without severely compromising someone's privacy and mental well-being. So I think you're going to have to trust me when I say: I have been a jerk. More than once, to people very close to me who are no longer very close to me. I have hurt people, occasionally deliberately. In the heat of the moment I have said things I instantly regretted. On more than one occasion it's resulted in an immediate block. I especially lost myself in the pandemic, making strong and spurious judgments on the characters of all of those people not fully vaxed, and expressing those opinions in caustic and cutting terms. I would blame the stress we all lived under, but that wouldn't be the truth. Not really. You let Mental Sarcastic Bastard out of his hole and he relishes taking over, insulting people in the most withering terms, TAKE THAT YOU SCABROUS SHITGIBBON. Feeling of absolute moral righteousness. 

Not exactly "divine".

I try to be a good friend and because "friends" were imaginary to me for so long I'm still -- STILL -- at a loss as to how to do it, oftentimes. I share too much, then misread your surprise as criticism and share too little. Even with my closest friends, I often stop myself from reaching out because Ken again? Guy just talked to me last week, Jesus, get away fly! My head knows you're not thinking that. Hopes you're not thinking that. Imagines you might not be thinking that. Are you thinking that? Maybe you're thinking that.

If you ever catch me thanking you for something utterly banal like listening to me, that's the thought process that prompted the thanks. I'm just so grateful that there's another human being in front of me (virtually or otherwise) who isn't going to punch me, insult me, or worst of all, turn their back on me and walk away. 

And yet people have walked away. Sometimes ran. For good reason.

You know who I think had something divine in him? Mr. Fred Rogers, that's who. Here's a man who lived much of his life in public and by absolutely all accounts he never acted anything less than loving to everyone he met, in person or at a distance. No matter how tired he was, no matter what was going wrong in his life that day. That's a man we could all do to be a bit more like. Not me. I'm just a large quivering network of flaws stitched together with the best of good intentions, is all I am.

Please. That's all I am. If I'm special, I'm no more special than you are.

I mean that.