so i started a new facebook account.
firstly, it was part of a cyclic purging that i observe myself doing; it's about realising that i spend too much time administrating my friendships, social connections, and related participation in semi-public dialogues. the purge is fueled by my phobia of time (there's not enough hours in the day, apparently), and thus if i limit my social/friendship/procrastination potential, i can take back some time to do things more necessary (as though things and people can be wedged apart). secondly, it was a reaction to the FB 'timeline' format which presented the last 5 years back to me as if to say 'here, we wrote your autobiography'. no! my autobiography is not linear, technologically determined, or the sum of my online performance. so the point was to self-delete and start afresh with pseudonym (one familiar to you if you read this) and clear slate. no photos, just words, and an agenda to script a new autobiography.
but then i found i couldn't self-delete. i found that i've built a web of connections with people, information, and news sources, and a culture of play that actually eases my concerns about time/production. and i've been able to bond with people, or stay looped in with faraway people, which maybe wouldn't happen otherwise. so i remain undeleted.
surveillance is a concern, of course. but this week i noted a 'come join the police force' ad in my margin, and that gave me hope. the spambots and data filters are taking my words and generating misfired messages. surely i've said 'fuck the police' in the course of my recent techno-performative networked history, and it seems the words are returned to me by mechanisms that misread. so perhaps the machine (for now) cannot know/shape/profile me at all.
plus, the machine doesn't read sarcasm, irony, or subtle and local cultures of performativity. the machine doesn't realise that what informs my words are the conversations that it is not privy to. much of my daily life evades it.
i was speaking to a friend this week who said she intentionally floods the web with her name so as to be less accountable for having a true online presence, and to exist as fragmentary, evasive, and promiscuously performative. these are my words, not hers, but this is what i take from the conversation. i have a new lover who has no concern for privacy and floods his FB page with endless raging words and drunken photos. i like his carelessness. because being careful is tedious. and maintaining privacy is something that takes much time, effort, and paranoia (all for no reward, because privacy, in any context, can never be guaranteed).
so now i have two accounts/selves, and in many ways my pseudonym is more me than me. there, like here, i am less conscious of who's watching, because maybe they don't even know who they're watching. i'm just a string of words that can be overwritten/re-written/de-written next week.
