Facebook:How to survive perverts, idiots and con(wo)men

Social media platform works best when content focuses on ideas and content, such as arts, literature, music, and cultural exchanges

Surviving social media requires thick skin: the writer learned to spot and ignore perverts, fakes, and manipulators

For those who started writing on typewriters,   drove rear wheel drive vehicles, or made phone calls on ancient contraptions which insisted that numbers be dialled by turning a ring (crazy!), social media is at best a necessary evil. But it dawns upon even the most recalcitrant that Facebook or Instagram is a one-upmanship (or personship) game, and  those who dread being left out in the cold would  sooner or later join the ranks of social media hordes  just to keep up with their own offspring, if not with the neighbours.

Expect some of the worst more than the best, and you will survive social media. You may even get to like it.

I was a late starter with digital things, going for a mobile phone only when my children began wondering why they couldn’t text me. I bought a digital camera only when the last colour film developing lab in Colombo shut down. This was due to a chronic inability to curb down nostalgia. I stayed determinedly away from Facebook for reasons which aren’t yet clear to me. 

I finally started a Facebook page ten years ago, but found it boring, and left soon after. When you do that, Facebook asks you why. I said I didn’t need it so much at that time.

Five years ago, I decided to return, and also to start a YouTube channel. This was before Covid. The crisis faced by print media (books, journals, newspapers) all over the world was already very evident;  and something which happens to late starters happened to me regarding digital media – I threw myself into these two platforms with enthusiasm, and saw digital journalism and video vlogs as a good parallel path to travel alongside the well-trodden and somewhat shaky print path.

Ten or so years later, I don’t find it endearing (I haven’t tried Twitter or Intagram because I don’t want to start collecting social media platforms the way I collected books). But it’s useful, and I’m a regular user and contributor.

That sounds very positive – but Facebook is full of nutcases, sex-maniacs, perverts, charlatans and sadists. The first year was very tough, with new ‘friends’ sensing that here was a novice so let’s have some fun and target practice. I almost quit in disgust, but hung in there only because I saw my page’s usefulness as an advertising platform for my  YT videos and creative ideas. I was focusing on the content, while the neurotics focused on the vulnerable man behind it. It’s amazing how fast you can grow a skin thick enough to survive the weirdos, and how quickly you learn to spot them behind the smiling façade.

I guess the problems I faced are common enough to all serious Facebook users. But they can be categorised according to age. Given my age, there were two broad categories, people my own age or close – ‘seniors’ for want of a better term,  and ‘juniors’, male and female, in their twenties and thirties.

In both categories, there are the serious, sincere people, those who have something to say and, above all, don’t mean any harm. In the case of seniors, I haven’t come across anyone with a false identity, deliberately trying to mislead me. But there have been quite a few such cases in the other, junior categories.

Some of these young males get to the point very fast – they are looking for sex. Now, I have a simple test for figuring out the priorities of people when I get a new friend request from someone under 30 – look at their Facebook friends. If they are  ‘senior males’ with a picture gallery of ‘uncles’ – forget it. I don’t care if they are brilliant at rocket science or if they studied at Harvard. They are out.

As for young females, they quite often turn out to be males in disguise, baiting people for fun. Most attempts are amateurish and you can see through them right away, but I found a couple of very clever ones – one pretended to be the Lankan wife of a Turkish businessman, talking about what a great lover he was. I told ‘her’ point blank I wasn’t interested in their sex life. 

The other said ‘she’ was from an aristocratic Kandyan family and now doing post-graduate studies  in New York, adding that ‘she’ had been abused by her father’s driver as a teenager. 

As ‘she’ started on the sordid details, I told her there must be tons of good psychiatrists in New York and to find one if she could afford it. When I told her I’d met plenty of such deeply troubled people when I was a counselor at Sri Lanka Sumithrayo (Befrienders International) long ago, ‘she’ signed off in a big hurry.

My advice is – get your priorities straight before you get into Facebook. If you don’t veer away from your chosen path, the nutcases will disappear and go looking for bait elsewhere. Facebook isn’t a cure for loneliness and despair. It isn’t a substitute for real human company. I have made several good friendships on FB, but I didn’t go there looking for friends. I already had good friends. I wanted to share idea, information, images, archival matter, and Face Book is good at that. 

People have different goals and priorities. For many, it’s a publicity hub for their holidays, birthdays and fun events. Others are more businesslike. Some make money on Facebook. I don’t mind doing that at all, but that’s wasn’t my goal, so I am not disappointed not making money there. As long as I can disseminate my views, ideas and archival matter, I am happy.

My private life isn’t on display on Facebook. It’s private. I’m not there for picnics and birthday parties.

I don’t get a lot of publicity, either. Rarely have my posts gone above a hundred likes. The average is 10-20. That’s OK, I have been in empty cinema auditoriums and I know what it costs to make those films. It costs me nothing to post a photograph, text or video, and I am happy if ten people watch and react. Quality isn’t always quantity. But FB can have its pleasant surprises for you – recently, I posted a  remark about William  Shakespeare on a Shakespeare fan page, and got over 200 likes, comments and shares.

But I have noticed that some  people who use my FB timeline for their own publicity rarely or never react to my own posts. I now retaliate by ignoring their posts. This is a one upman (person)ship game. I hate such games, but everything has to be placed in context and, if I keep giving likes to people who consistently ignore me, they will take me for a fool.

I started this FB page as a platform for the arts and literature. I’m glad that goal has been achieved, with many posts not just about Sri Lanka but also from around the world. There’s someone posting our vintage music on vinyl records. Curzon Road (an American site) posts opera as well as 19th century photographs. My FB timeline is a focal point for animal welfare activists, there’s even an Indian group posting regularly. There is a Richard Attenborough Page, and regular posts on Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Bergman, classic Indian cinema, Westerns, Sophia Loren, good books, poetry, authors, and much more. I love all that.

Unfortunately, politics too, have infiltrated. Sex and politics fuel the imagination of many, and fire up the unimaginative, not just here but everywhere, and I don’t block them unless they are obnoxious. I learned to suffer fools long before I got into Facebook.