BANGKOK – It was sometimes ago that the New Yorker featured a cartoon that went something like this: “you can be a dog behind a computer and no one knows.”
That’s my thought on the internet in general and social media in particular. Behind the masks of perfectly menicured life or perfect make up, there lie multiple truth, multiple reality, flaws and imperfection. Reality.
I joined Facebook when I was doing my Masters at the London School of Economics and Political Science – far away from my hometown glory of Bangkok, Thailand. Although I have known about Facebook from my highschool roommate when it was only accessible for IVY League students, I was not quite excited about it. I thought to myself “who in their right mind published their lives to the public?”
Stay ahead of the geopolitical week.
MD Briefing delivers expert analysis across five global fronts — the Indo-Pacific, energy, geoeconomics, European security, and the Middle East — every Monday morning. Free.
During the same time, the One Laptop Per Child policy was popular. I remember attending several public forums whereby this tech savvy professionals tried to convince low-tech Development experts that the internet is powerful and through it poverty would be uplifted.
Being an outgoing and outspoken introvert, if that makes sense, I signed up for FB with an ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, I wanted to keep in touch with my friends and family from afar – to let them know how I am, what I eat, where I visit. On the other hand, I was scared and anxious of the unintended consequences. Well, my BFF called me “the most intense meaning making machine.” She is right.
As a writer, I travelled a lot and carried multiple devices: cellphone, iPads and computers. I changed 4 countries in 10 years and attended several schools and worked in several interesting projects.
FB had become the essential tool for me to store my pictures, poems and proses. I posted some on public, mostly I kept them private. In another word, FB is my cloud.
My posts had rarely been LIVE. I posted multiple things: narcassist selfie, obnoxious jokes, sentimental poems and love songs. Sometimes I rapped, some other time I put my stream of consciousness out there as if I was meditating. A lot of time, I created a dialogue as if I was writing an Opera. I was thinking of Pavarotti.
You see, I am a messed: Fifty Cent x Evita, Phantom x Avenue Q.
If that was not enough, I was very naive about FB. I thought to myelf “technology can empower lives, internet can end poverty.” Believe me, if you read those books in undergrads, you ended relatively empty headed rather than critical.
For the past five years, I have been fundraising for art projects in Thailand called “UNITE Thailand.” We created 15 projects for children around the country to play and have fun. Everything was for free and for freedom. Philosophically, it is populism x art, equality x freedom.
It is the best of what LSE has taught me.
Given that I have been to so many schools globally, I thought if I hosted a “Global Auction” on FB – I might be able to make more kids smile. Good try. Not quite. Only one highschool friend from Nepal, Salina Giri, bought my mother’s Prada bag for 500 USD. Despite being the only act of kindness, that meant the world to me and 300 other children in Loei.
The ramification of “sharing my ideas” online was worst. Day after day, I woke up and saw the quotes I put on to promote the projects being hijacked for political, personal and private purposes. Again, being buddhist, forgiveness.
I had hated FB for quite sometime for that it interrupted my peace. It allowed strangers to send me hate speech and there was a point, I got several messages that could have put me behind bar. Not British bars. Jail to be exact. Some people have mistood my Coco necklace with Communism and they misunderstood my initial R with Radical.
Perhaps my political sarcasm had gone too far, perhaps my English vocabulary has confused many. I have gone through the misteps again and again in my head and finally I had the epiphany. It was me who was stupid.
No one in their right mind would type Chekov “The Story of Nobody” right after “Anna K” story – Nobody – would put “Evita” right next to “Alicia.”
Well, I did.
If all the degrees I hold did not prevent me from self-destruction and public humiliation, I would like to dedicate this piece to all the children out there to“DO NOT BE LIKE ME,” who think they can SHARE their works, who believe that FB LIKES are REAL and who wait for INBOX from somebody to take them to the Empire State.
No one knows that behind the happy hello kitty profile picture of a go-getter oversized cheerleader, I had just survived the worst Asthma attack and breathing in tears, in the depth of the Thai forest.
If Development is Freedom and if Sen was right, allow me to free myself from the chained cruelty of Facebook. I didn’t deactivate it, I threw my phone in the river and said final goodbye.