Shortly after creating an account with a fake birth date, I changed my mind and
started to believe that I would do better without Facebook. Studies showed that
people could get anxieties and depression from cyberspace by comparing with
others, even though or maybe because they were "friends." This seemed to reflect
badly on us as a vain, jealous, and brittle bunch and as an average member of
the human race, I'd better not risk it. It helped that after some time of no use,
I lost the credentials and couldn't recover the account. Then a decade passed.
It was jiu-jitsu that brought me back to Facebook. My school used it as a
message board and Henry had a group there. Friday, I tried for the third (or
maybe the fourth) time to login onto my account, using one password that I
remembered. The programmers must have fixed or broken something as, unlike in
the past, my password was accepted and I did not need to provide two references
to prove identity. Instead, I was asked to confirm the intention to proceed
after a long absence. That was it and after clicking on 'YES,' I was in!
It was like entering a house I used to live in and had since abandoned. The last
entry of the activity log showed my saying happy birthday to a former professor,
in Sep 2012. A new list of "friends" found by some algorithm was waiting for me
to connect. The old contacts were still there, reminding me that I had lost them
in the physical world. The last one I shook hands with was my professor in 2019.
Everything has to go through the test of time.
I went to the academy's page for its 11-year's worth of content. The posts and
videos there felt like a blackhole, sucking me in, and 10 hours later spitting
me out. My jiu-jitsu might not have improved as a result but, man, I came away
knowing much more about my training partners, e.g., who was a cop and who was a
vet, who worked in real estate and who fought wild fires, etc. As the students
were often reminded to leave their ego at the door, on the mat we talked about
almost nothing besides the art. So nine months into training, I had known little
about my partners outside of jiu-jitsu. I should have felt more excited at these
discoveries but strangely, I did not. I was more impressed at some Jean Jacques
quotes and videos instead. One thing was for sure: my school rocked on the Web.
I think I will come back to visit Facebook often from now on. At almost 50, am I
mature enough not to get burned? Let's see.
