Deleted from Facebook.

Nov 4

A few days ago I was going about my business. I turned in my ballot and did my civic duty of voting and shortly after I was in the car with my parents on the way to look at some houses as we are trying to move (momentous things often happen to me when I am in the car with my parents, example: Stories Foundation) when I went to check my Facebook like any addicted-to-my-phone millennial.

To my surprise, my app wasn’t loading right and then it led me to a page telling me my Facebook page had been disabled. My first thought was, what in the world did I do to accidentally disable my Facebook account? Did I do a butt disable? (Butt disabling: similar to butt texting, that awkward moment when you text something you never meant to text to someone because you had your phone in your back pocket, more apt to happen in the late 2000’s but still a possibility, right?) I proceeded through the process of letting Facebook know this disabled account thing was most definitely a mistake, although whose I didn’t quite know. I checked the mistake box, took a picture of my license (required for my identity, I would think) and was instantly told my account was disabled for violating community guidelines and my case would not be reviewed.

Say, what? I am not gonna lie, I re-did that form like 10 times - license picture and all. How in the world could my Facebook account be disabled? What community guidelines did I break? I couldn’t even fathom. I have never gotten any kind of message from Facebook for anything I have posted, ever. Also, I hadn’t even been posting that much lately. Scrolling, yes, but posting, not a ton. I was shocked.

To try and make a story that I suppose could be long, shorter, it turns out my Facebook account was disabled, essentially I have been deleted from Facebook like I never existed, because I was a guest admin of a group for human trafficking awareness. I was an admin in that group so I could post credible information about human trafficking. The group was well monitored by the group creators and only the admins were allowed to post with the intent of vetting the posts so it wouldn’t be spreading false information and be shut down. Not only was the group shut down with no warning, every admin of that group’s personal Facebook account was permanently disabled with no hope for reviewal and re-entry into Facebook.

There are a lot of feelings associated with being excommunicated from the largest social gathering of “friends” in the world. Rejection, shame (even though I literally did nothing wrong and posted not one thing contrary to any of the ‘community guidelines’), shock, anger, confusion, overwhelm (what about all those Facebook messages in messenger, and all the groups, and all the communication I now have to recreate…) and even a little relief.

For awhile now Facebook and I have had a love/hate relationship. On the one hand, it is where almost everyone is. Facebook is a ready made audience for many and used as such. As a writer and speaker, Facebook is a place I am meant to build a platform (there are books on this topic for heavens sakes) as a friend it is where I connect with people I don’t see in real life and as a mom it is where I have memories of my kids from over the years. Those are all reasons to keep Facebook. However, I have more and more seen Facebook as a place where people opt out of being human, sling hateful comments, do not listen to understand and use their wall as a billboard for their own opinions. Meaningful engagement (especially recently) is at an all time low on Facebook and my unhealthy scrolling of it has contributed to some inner struggles for me. I have been wondering for awhile if somehow putting a barrier between myself and Facebook would equal a healthier me. Well, wonder no more, it looks like this was decided fo me.

To be completely canceled from Facebook means anything I have ever done on Facebook is deleted. Anything I have shared is gone. I no longer show up as Chris’ wife, my parent’s daughter, the co-founder of Stories Foundation. Somehow my writer page is still up, I think because it is connected to Instagram, but I don’t want to say that too loudly or else that might effectively disappear as well. Although, I am not sure how much it matters since I can’t actually access it.

There are a few ways I could end this story about Facebook. We could draw the conclusion and heed the warning that we must build our lives other places then only on social media. I am grateful I have pictures backed up other places, an email list I can talk to and Instagram. Maybe it is time to foray back in to the Twitter world? I am not sure, more to come. We could talk about how if my identity was solely in my social media following I would be having a major identity crisis, thankfully I am pretty secure in who I am and what I am meant to do and I only had a minor crisis at the deletion of my Facebook self.

But I think the real thing I want to talk about is, in a small way, I have felt what it feels like to be outed from majority culture I was once an accepted and valued part of. One of the first responses to my mom sharing about my Facebook saga on her page was an accusation of me being a human trafficking conspiracy theorist. See, when a person is pushed to the margins of majority culture the first response of of the culture whether spoken or not, is often, what did that person do for this to happen to them and how can I be sure I don’t also do that same thing so this doesn’t happen to me.

We like our constructs, we think systems and organizations are meant to serve us and most often they do, until they don’t. The hard truth is, we live in a culture that deletes people all the time, and I am not talking about the loud voices on opposite ends of a massive political chasm. I am talking about those who find themselves on the outside of whatever we have deemed as successful or right and either side of that political chasm has a different list they are going by, which means the number of marginalized falling through the giant hole in the middle is only increasing.

Like with my Facebook experience, when someone is on the outside we automatically jump to thinking they did something to get themselves there. To be in that position they must deserve it, because if we tell the truth that their situation was done to them, or is a part of the hand they were dealt, or is because they are standing up for something right that not many other people are standing for (ahem, in my case) that means we could also become a victim of the construct we love, uphold and often find our comfort and identity in.

I don’t know, maybe I am way off. Maybe this parallel between my Facebook canceling experience and the marginalized I encounter is too extreme. Or maybe we need some extreme examples to wake us up.

Moral of the story? Don’t be like Facebook and cancel people because they bring up hard, uncomfortable truths or because their lives have been harder than you can imagine. Don’t make assumptions about them to justify your own inaction. Don’t make decisions about individuals without doing your due diligence and checking out the human being behind the profile. And lastly, for heavens sakes, do not build your life and identity around social media. What you do and who you are better be deeper than your next social media status because social media is not real life and at any moment you could be deleted.

And if someone shared this on Facebook, and you want to keep up with me, feel free to fill out the form below so we can hang out via email because as I have learned in a very personal way, social media cannot be trusted.