Scrape my data… PLEASE!
I stopped posting on Facebook just after January 20. It was a difficult decision but one that felt necessary in light of Zuckerberg’s capitulation/donation to Trump and subsequent appearance at his inauguration. I’m no longer interested in having my data scraped to feed META’s large language model that fuels the AI chatbots Mark Zuckerberg suggested could take the place of IRL friends. But, in truth, I haven’t deactivated or deleted my Facebook account yet. I still buy and sell on Marketplace and there’s no way to get there but through Facebook (I doubt META will ever spin Marketplace off on its own: its tight integration with Facebook is part of its appeal). Okay, retaining access to Marketplace is not the only reason I haven’t bailed entirely on Facebook. I miss my friends, even the ones I never met IRL. On my way to Marketplace I’ll quickly scroll through my feed, often the only way to get updates on family, friends, acquaintances. Facebook so thoroughly owns our entire discourse that emails, texts, and phone calls from friends are down to a trickle (historians especially regret the loss of personal correspondence, all those postcards and letters no one sends now). When a quick Facebook post can instantly spread your news to friends and strangers alike why bother? There are friends of mine (one I’ve known 50 years) who no longer contact me directly. If I want to find out what’s up in their lives I need to check their Facebook posts. Call me a relic but it’s discomfiting to hear about births, deaths, new jobs, retirements, moves, vacations, major purchases, etc. exclusively via Facebook, knowing all that data belongs to META to do with what they will. But my FOMO is real, as is a far less elegant acronym (I just created): TSD.
The Time Sucking Detour.
TSD happened to me yet again today. A post about the burgeoning MAGA-fication of my ancestral homeland caught my eye and before I could stop myself I was replying at length to someone’s ignorant nonsense about Long Island being “settled” by “white flight” during the 1960s and ‘70s. Here’s what I wrote:
As someone born in Amityville and who grew up in Lindenhurst, the idea that Long Island was “settled” by white flight in the ‘60s and ‘70s is incredibly wide of the beam, to put it mildly. Jesus, Lawn Guyland - like much of the mainland - had numerous indigenous tribes before the Dutch and English showed up. My people - from Greece, Italy and Malta - migrated east in the 1940s from Manhattan and the Bronx like so many other ethnic minorities at the time: to escape overcrowding in “the city”: not as some sort of “white flight.” Unfortunately, there are pockets of racism all over this country and LI has been trending ever-rightward since I fucked off to NJ (where they stab you in the front, thank God) in 1986. But go outside any major “blue” city by 20, 30, 40 miles and you will find MAGA morons bleating endlessly about ‘Merica while having no actual clue about what makes it “great.” While it’s true I would never want to live on LI again it serves no purpose to paint the entire place with the same brush.
The original commenter felt the need to respond at length and I’d paste his words here (anonymously) but he deleted what he wrote after I responded with this:
One of the reasons I’ve stopped posting on my Facebook page since Jan. 20 is because any time I spend here (even if it’s to buy or sell on Marketplace) involves the invariable time-sucking detour of being pulled into a back-and-forth like this. I pushed back on your initial stipulation about white flight in the ‘60s and ‘70s being what “settled” Long Island. It was painting with a wide brush. But, please, mansplain some more about redlining and racism and the supposedly uniquely intolerant attitude of the “majority” of Long Islanders to someone who was born and raised there and got the fuck out because of all the willful ignorance.
I’m sure there’s been more responses to what I wrote but I’m trying like hell not to look at them for fear of another TSD.
Lawn Guyland As Racist/Anti-Semitic Haven
Has Long Island churned out more racists and anti-semites than other suburban areas? I doubt it. Redlining certainly existed for decades (growing up in Lindenhurst (formerly Breslau, see pic above) we understood Wyandanch to be “…where the blacks live”) and people I knew (including fellow Nihilistics) used the N-word freely. Anti-semitism was also prevalent, if less overt. Mike Nicolosi (RIP) and I both worked at a local bakery (Mike got me the job) where the master baker, while whipping up bear claws, cakes and pies, would spout the most racist, anti-semitic bullshit. Kurt (whom we once burned in effigy) would’ve fit right in with the German-American Bund, who marched through Lindenhurst on their way to Camp Siegfried in Yaphank. Recently, PBS reran the American Experience installment Nazi Town USA and I spotted something I hadn’t the first time it ran. Apparently, if you had your own cabin at Camp Siegfried you’d put the name of your town above the door. As vintage black & white images of the camp panned past I thought I spotted something familiar. I hit REWIND and there it was…
Just beneath a swastika, the name of my town, Lindenhurst. I don’t know how many Jews lived in Lindenhurst in the 1930s but in 1975 I met Glenn Katz in Junior High and we became best friends until he moved with his family to Florida. Glenn’s parents, Harvey and Sheila, treated me like a member of the family and their house became a refuge from mine. Glenn was one of the eyewitnesses to the journey I went on when I picked up a guitar. We fell out of touch after I visited him in Florida in 1979 but reconnected over a decade ago, probably via Facebook. Glenn and I get on the phone now and again during long drives and I even interviewed him from behind the wheel for the NIHILISTIC book (I’d love a re-do when we’re in the same room together). I asked him about his experience with anti-semitism in Lindenhurst and he said there were bigots but, thankfully, they were the rare exception.
Meta Schmeta
I’m also still in touch with my Long Island friends Bill and Jim. They’ve known me 50 years and help me remember what I was like back then, even if it’s hard for me to connect the dots sometimes. I’m not sure I miss that Chris (so much self-loathing!) but I miss that time, before Facebook and Instagram and X (and even BlueSky) blotted out every other form of communication. The computer in your pocket and all its social media apps promise a world of friends at your fingertips but it’s a lie. Everyone’s just performing, putting up their most flattering pictures, glamorized experiences and extreme opinions, heightening themselves in a quest for attention from the maximum number of “friends” or “followers” (I still roll my eyes if I hear the word “Influencer”). My true friends and I share most everything unfiltered and I’ve come to rely on those relationships, dwindling as they are, more than ever while on this Dark Timeline™. We need each other to get through this madness and I don’t want to be one of many commenters, weighing in on whatever you’re “sharing” online, never having a one-on-one conversation. Call, email, text a friend, make plans to get together. Or, fucking hell, mail them a letter or a postcard.
Said the guy with his own Substack…