I’ve effectively boycotted Facebook and social media. The reason is the same reason I boycotted watching TV in 2012. By watching TV I was inviting horrible, dehunanizing mind-garbage into my home. Willingly.

When in Kamp Kaseman in 2012, the realization bloomed that the news is used exclusively to tell us what to be scared of and what to be mad about. There might be a one minute human interest story where a cub reporter details the cute-o-meter pegging red line when visiting a sanctuary for starving African children newly come to our shores from Tasmania and one blossom of a child hugging tightly a puppy, kitten, badger, and goldfish cuddling in a Christmas stocking that she carried here all the way from war-torn Lichtenstein … but this doesn’t wash away the emotional stain of the preceding 25 minutes.

And then there are the TV shows where friends would say “You have to watch Breaking Bad! It’s not really about drugs, it’s about the characters.” And I’ll confess to enjoying Dexter and Bones because of the characters . . . set against the backdrop of murder.


Fear. Anger. Drugs. Murder.


This is the emotional dumpster fire I allowed to burn in my home. The TV was not conducive to well-being. While in Kamp Kaseman, I made the strict decision to excise TV from my home and my life. Odd at first, and shortly freeing and enriching. Without the chunky TV vomit aggressively force fed into my skull, my bipolar symptoms lessened directly and remarkably. Plus, I had more time for everything else life has to offer, like hijacking the intercom in Whole Foods and alerting shoppers that a laboradoodle in the Subaru hatchback with the open moonroof just escaped and was running through traffic.


Entire. Store. Emptied.


So, let’s chat about Facebook for a moment, for Facebook is only worth a moment of discussion. Meaning, Facebook is close to worthless.


Facebook is just as much of an emotional dumpster fire as TV.


When I logged in to Facebook each morning, I was greeted by, on average, 86 new reasons to hate Trump. Compounded with the average 31 new reasons to hate Pelosi, this was a lot of bitter moral outrage to digest over corn flakes lightly sprinkled with bacon bits. It was becoming apparent that people were so busy being Republican or Democrat they forgot how to be decent long long ago.

Guess what? After cutting Facebook out of my daily routine I began feeling much cleaner and less vile. The filth of inviting into my home such an overwhelming magnitude of disgust and hatred . . . it was adversely affecting my mental wellness. And, as you should recognize by now, I put all my effort into managing my bipolar and PTSD symptoms. To openly engage in an activity that counters and contradicts my efforts is just plain stupid on my part. So, I stopped being stupid.

One caveat is because Stand Up To Stigma has a Facebook group and page I do help manage these SUTS web presences. However, I never stick around long enough to paruse my personal news feed. And I am the better and the healthier for this choice.

I do want to make an observation and recommendation. My belief is after posting 20 reasons you hate Trump, you have validated your hatred and no longer need to provide additional proof of your hatred. At 20 reasons you’ve made your case and hit your quota. Please stop choking up the interweb with your ethical redundancy.

I understand this will kill one of the three top tier cottage industries on the interweb. Let’s start with squashing Trump Hatred first. We can tackle ridding the interweb of porn and cat videos in due course.

Just imagine. We have the communication miracle of the interweb and we squander this miracle of human ingenuity and cultural connectivity on Trump, shagging, and cats. Future archaeoligists and anthropologists are going to have such great fun riddling this one out. They might construe we used the interweb to obsess on Trump shagging cats. Archaeology is far distant from an exact science.


Synopsis: TV and Facebook bad for Steve’s mental health. No TV and Facebook, Steve feels much better.