As of this writing I’ve been married almost five months and have owned a home and mortgage a bit longer. Almost every morning I follow the same routine. I wake up when I get up, about 5:30 AM. Around 6:20 I put on pants and a seasonably appropriate shirt to let my wife out of the driveway, since she leaves for work a lot earlier than I do and I’m usually parked behind her. I take my meds and eat breakfast about 7, hop in the shower at 7:30, and then get ready to leave for work.
In-between these familiar steps I’m usually spending alone time in my “mancave,” and as much as I try to make good use out of it, I find myself doing a lot of Facebook checking.
This morning, 5:30 AM or thereabouts, I was playing around on Amazon and decided to impulse buy one of my favorite shameless stupid comedies, Booty Call, on DVD. My wife and I each budget ourselves $100 spending money a month and I had some gift card cash credited on my account. The “Bootiest Edition” of Booty Call was six bucks (not including shipping…I regret dropping Prime) so altogether there wasn’t much debate involved in this purchase. Add to shopping cart, proceed to checkout, boom, expecting it on Thursday.
Then on the receipt page I saw a button to ‘Share’ my recent purchase on Facebook. “Hey, my ‘Friends’ might get a kick out of this,” I thought to myself. “It’s Booty Call – the ‘Bootiest’ Edition! Someone will smile.” I clicked the button and sure enough, the evidence appeared on my Timeline.
I circled the block to let my wife out of the driveway. I took my pills and ate my cereal. I showered. Then I drifted back to Facebook, where I discovered that no one had ‘liked’ or commented on my choice in 90’s sex comedy. “Maybe most of my common associates are still waking up,” I thought.
Onward to work. Now the national weather service has been going crazy over a terrible Winter hellstorm that’s due to slam into the east coast over the weekend. In my area the local forecasting has been wildly inconsistent with what we’re supposed to get, as local forecasts are wont to do. Again, my attention returned to Facebook. I figured the upcoming annual apocalypse would be a lively topic for discussion, so I posted a status update:
An hour or so went by, and in that time my Facebook friends had this to say about the circumstances surrounding our weather: nothing. Not a damned thing. Huh. Alright. Well hey, did you know about this?
Four hours passed. No one cared. Not about Booty Call, the weather, Bad Santa 2, or any of it. I posted a link to a YouTube clip that was also ignored, and then circled back around to the winter storm, which in my area is slated to be not much of a winter storm at all.
I kept checking, and checking, and…nothing. I realize that what I am presenting here is a relatively dull Timeline. All the same, I started growing anxious. Questions and worries began running through my mind, the usual kind I put up with as a chronic anxiety sufferer. “Am I really that boring?” “Are any of these people interested in me at all?” “Why do I feel like I’m talking to myself in an empty room?”
This is what it ultimately came down to though, and the point I’m getting at. It’s about, and it always has been about, the red numbers.
When I see that little globe go active in the upper right-hand corner, I get excited, elated, impatient to click on it and reveal what it has to tell me. There are two driving forces at work here. The first one is the obvious notion that someone paid attention to me, taking a few seconds out of their waking hours to click ‘Like’ or type a short sentence. The other is that the little globe is, in essence, a mystery prize box. Sometimes that prize is a freemium game request for a nail or a jellybean, but in other cases, if I’m lucky…
Those red numbers provide a brief, fleeting dopamine kick to my brain, and although the pleasure only lasts a second or two, I feel a compulsive need to collect more of them. To me that is the essence of the game, and the ultimate goal of owning a Facebook account. More red numbers means more little pleasure buzzes, and thus my mission is to collect more of them.
Facebook is providing its users with the easiest means of tapping the brain’s reward system as a free service. The problem is that when one comes to rely on that easy dopamine cookie and it stops being delivered, the natural response is to either try harder or get frustrated. The reason I shared Booty Call and jokes about the weather with everyone was the “throw against the wall until something sticks” principle. At some point there has to be solace in the mess.
Meanwhile, Facebook uses the hunt for the red numbers to soak up advertising revenue alongside their other infamous business venture, data mining. On the user end I’m the rat in the cage, hungry but ignoring the food dispenser over the pleasure button.
What’s interesting to me is that I initially came to theorize all this on my own after a lot of soul searching and self reflection. But a random Google search into the matter surprised me. It turns out that studies have been conducted into this very matter and have drawn the same conclusions—this time by people much smarter and more credible than myself. Moreover, Facebook can have rather nasty afflictions on the brain and brain chemistry. Modern psychology is not blind to the Facebook dopamine cookie jar.
With all this in mind, why do I continue subjecting myself to it?
The truth is that I am considering deactivating my account and walking away, and I have been for some time. But it’s a difficult step to take, and not just because of the red numbers. There are people on my friend list I actually talk to—strange, I know—and Facebook is my only means of communication with many of them. Another issue is that since the wedding, the photos, name sharing, new relatives and such means that my Facebook account isn’t really mine alone anymore. Just like real life, I’m married in the virtual world as well.
I’m done now.
I never got my red numbers.
The Anxious Scribe 