Episode 66: Transcript

"What is Meta for?"

Doug French: You're not using headphones, so there's a steady hiss coming.

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: It might be the fact that I have a space heater on. Let me turn it off.

Doug: Ah, that's better.

Magda: Is it gone? Okay. All right, we got to talk fast so my legs don't freeze.

[music]

Doug: So happy new year.

Magda: Happy new year!

Doug: This is our first recording of 2025.

Magda: Which is kind of amazing because we're recording this and it feels like we've been in 2025 for like six or seven years already.

Doug: Yeah. It's very funny to see people who are like, I've had my trial of 2025 and I'd like to unsubscribe, please.

Magda: Yeah. I mean, we haven't even gotten to the inauguration yet. Like this is going to get way, way worse.

Doug: And of course, those funny things were shown to me by social media. So now, of course, we're going to have a discussion about social media and then post our results on social media, which always makes my brain hurt.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: I wanted to talk to you about Facebook because you actually put forth an extensive post about why Facebook still does it for you and how you get a lot more out of Facebook using it the way you do and the overall cost benefit of things than you would thinking about what a completely odious stain Mr. Z is.

Magda: I mean, I think I... Right. Right. Right. When I first got on Facebook, which was in 2007, that was back in the days when people were restricted to the updates that they could make. It was like, Magda is, and then you were supposed to fill in like at the library or whatever. And I was like, I don't know, what am I going to do with this? Why do I need this? My coworker was there encouraging me to use it. So I thought, okay, well, what would I like out of this? And I thought what I would like out of this is to talk to the eight people that I know here. You know, it was like one person from high school, one person from college and just my coworkers that were on it. You know, I was finding more people every day. And I thought, why am I on this if we're not actually talking to each other? So the first thing I did was that I went to everybody who I was friends with every day because, you know, sometimes people would update once a day and they would comment something like, you know, so-and-so is at the library, right? And I would just say something, I would just make some sort of comment to try to start some sort of conversation. And then I would try to figure out how to formulate my status updates to get people to answer back and comment on them. And so at a certain point, I was getting people commenting on everything that I said. And I was like, oh, this is great.

Doug: There came the dopamine. Yes, for sure.

Magda: You may have been able at that point to put a thumbs up. I don't remember. It was absolutely that deadly thing about trying to get a ton of likes. But for me, it was not that I was trying to get validation that people had seen it, but that I was trying to get some sort of interaction. Because otherwise, why am I there? Why do I care that my coworker is at the library? Like, why does anybody care that I'm on the subway? You know, like trying to move it away from just telling people the physical location that you were at. And then what I really did was turn my page into a community center. And I have this sort of unofficial posting calendar in my head, right? Like every couple of days, I like to post something that I know is going to give everybody the opportunity to to make a joke about it because people really like being funny and reading other people's funny stuff and interacting with them. I post a lot of stuff that I think is going to get people to interact with each other in my comments. People have met and fallen in love with each other in the comment section of my personal page. A lot of friendships have started in the comments on my page. And that's how I use Facebook. It's real people. And I know almost everybody who's on my page.

Doug: You have built an amazing community. And it's funny, you were talking about you've made it a center and now it's becoming a senior center.

Magda: Well, yeah, I mean, that's the only reason this conversation is on topic, right? Like, if we were talking about Snapchat, who would care? It's just that Facebook is the social media for 50 year olds.

Doug: That was the Gen X thing, yes. And we've spent 20 years now with that in the background of our daily existence, even though for eight years we've known it's up to real nefarious business. And I think what so much of 2025 is going to mean for me is in terms of balancing the macro and the micro, because the macro, which is the big world, is going to break my heart all year. You know it. And the micro of conversations like this, podcasts with you talking with people at church meeting people for coffee that's what's going to sustain us the community the micro is all we have at least all I see value in i mean i love being able to check in on my friends whom i don't see as often as i'd like and that makes me sad for reasons we'll talk about as well but i'm at a real crossroads here i know your ledger is pretty strong in the benefit column and mine is not. And well i'm If I focus on the macro too much on Cambridge Analytica and now this new abandonment of fact-checking and how Facebook essentially destroyed journalism by eating up all the classified ads, I mean, it's a lot to process and it's a lot to compartmentalize.

Magda: To begin with, I completely understand people who want to leave Facebook, who don't want to be part of it. But I also don't think that the people who are leaving Facebook had never thought about leaving Facebook before. Like, I don't think that it was just like they were happy. And then Mark Zuckerberg was like, oh, we're going to stop doing this thing that we've been doing not even adequately for like three years now. And suddenly they were like, well, oh, my God, I had no idea. This place is a cesspool. I'm leaving. Goodbye. Right. Like, I think that people who are leaving are people who, like you, have not been happy on Facebook for a long time. I also think that there is something to be said for the fact that people need to go to the medium that fits their brain better. You are, I think, incredibly gifted at posting on Instagram. You have a very interesting feed. You're great with Stories. You pick out this wide variety of stuff that all seems to be like in your wheelhouse of interest. Like you're very good at Instagram. I have no idea what to do on Instagram. I post on my grid like, I don't know, once a month, maybe. And I post my stories like maybe once or twice a week, if that. I just don't know what to do on Instagram. Like on Instagram, I look at other people's stuff, but I don't know what to do. Like Facebook is my place.

Doug: Are the skill sets that far apart? Absolutely. How do you see that? Just because it's more text driven?

Magda: Yes. When I have a thought, it has nothing to do with a visual. Interesting.

Doug: Interesting.

Magda: And if I have a thought about a visual, my thought is words about that visual. And maybe part of that is because I also can't draw for shit. So like if I had the idea of a picture, I couldn't make it happen. I could describe to you what I'm thinking about, but I couldn't make it look like anything except a stick figure. So it's not functional for me in the way that Facebook, like I open up that little window, like what's on your mind? Oh my God, 45 things. Let's start. Right. And I know what my editorial policies are on Facebook. I know what my tone is on Facebook. I know what mode of discourse I want to be in on Facebook, like all of this stuff. I know I have a style guide for Facebook in my head. I have known for a very long time that Mark Zuckerberg is a disgusting human being who doesn't really know very much about business and like best practices and being smart in any way. I don't think that his new announcements this week are really substantively any different from any of the other things that we've known or discovered about him in recent times. So I mean, first of all, this whole fact checking thing. Fact checking has only been in existence on Facebook for a few years, right? And fact checking has never functioned effectively. People were still posting horrible things. People were still posting lies constantly. But what was happening was people would make jokes about those lies. And then the jokes were getting hung up in the fact checking. Also, they started suspending people on Facebook from posting because things would get caught. I mean, every time I would make any kind of derogatory comment about Putin or or anyone else, I would get a three or five or eight day ban from posting on Facebook. So for me, removing this fact checking is actually going to be a great editorial policy because I will be able to say Putin is a piece of trash and not get banned for it.

Doug: This is really interesting. This is like total “Man Bites Dog” stuff. We're totally flipped here, I think, in many ways, because all the concerns I think are valid in terms of it's okay to start marginalizing different looking, sounding, feeling, thinking people.

Magda: Right. But the other thing is it was never not OK. It's just that Mark Zuckerberg said the quiet part out loud. And so it's not like suddenly it's going to be open season on trans people. Like, do you have people on your Facebook page who have just been waiting until Mark Zuckerberg said it was OK to start trashing people? All the trans people you know, because I do not like the people on my page are not going to change what they are saying. And part of that is because anybody who says anything anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-woman, like any of that stuff, I just block them immediately because I don't want that shit on my page.

Doug: Well, that's what I wanted to get at because I've always maintained for years now, like even on when Twitter was Twitter like eight years ago, as these platforms evolved, it was incumbent upon each of us to use them more effectively and put in more work to cultivate them and curate them so that they created the experience we wanted.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: And Instagram, I enjoy that. just because the algorithm will just start showing me things. Like right now, all it's showing me is people unfucking things. And I love that. It's so satisfying to watch somebody cut the grass or unclog a drain or unclog a drain pipe. Oh my God. You know, huge sewer pipes of crap coming out. God, that's so satisfying because it strikes me as a fantasy in many ways, watching people make progress in the world and make things better, leave things better than they found them. But the thing is, that happens so often. That happens so much more. It's just it's not sexy. It doesn't sell. But like even with Twitter and its late stage before it got sold, the only way to get the most out of that was to make lists. and use each list for what its purpose was, to find news, to interact with friends, to follow a sports team. You had to put the work in. And the same goes through with Facebook. You really got to work hard, blocking people to keep that shit out. If you do get news from Facebook, which I never have, it's incumbent upon them to double check and triple check and everything. And of course, they don't.

Magda: Well, I mean, I used to get news from Facebook in the form of people I knew would post articles from reputable sources. Right. And I maybe wouldn't have seen that or heard of it from someplace else. So I would be like, oh, this is an interesting story. But that doesn't happen as often anymore, right?

Doug: Well, especially since so much is paywalled.

Magda: Right. And even the sources we thought were reputable. I mean, like the New York Times is a shambles. Oh, my God. And Washington Post is a piece of trash. Like I saw the day after the fires started in California, there was this Washington Post article that flipped through my feed that said, “we have a list of all the celebrities who've lost everything.” What? In the Washington Post? Like, what the hell? Washington Post is Us Magazine now?

Doug: Yeah. It's the catnip that triggers their most primordial schadenfreude. You know, there's a lot of class warriors out there who relish the idea of the very wealthy being brought down.

Magda: I also think that the celebrities aren't really the ultra wealthy who've lost everything. You know what I mean? Like it's the people behind the scenes who have houses that are worth $150 million who you don't know their name, like the ultra wealthy, right? Like if we're talking about quote unquote celebrities who are barely making any money because they have to pay out to everybody to stay popular. And, you know, maybe they managed to buy a two million dollar home and hold on to it and all this kind of stuff. Like the whole thing is just so ghoulish. And it really is like people don't understand class solidarity at all. Just because somebody is making 10 times what you are doesn't mean that they're actually not still in the same boat because of the way wages haven't kept up.

Doug: Well, “ghoulish” is the zeitgeist now. I mean, remember when you only had horror films in October? Now we're getting Nosferatu on Christmas Day. And now we're getting that guy Heart Eyes on Valentine's Day. Have you seen the ad for that?

Magda: Heart Eyes? No, what is it?

Doug: Some serial killer with a mask but has heart eyes and is killing people.

Magda: Okay. All right. That's actually funny. I cannot stand horror films. I especially hate slasher films, but that's a really funny idea and I wish I'd come up with it.

Doug: But we're seeing horror films year round now because I guess I don't see any value in horror films.

Magda: Okay. So there's a lot of actual academic scholarship on this, but basically they serve the same function as a release that cheering for a sports team does for some people.

Doug: I'll just stay cheering for sports teams though.

Magda: That's fine. I mean, I don't watch horror films either. I recognize that they have a function.

Doug: I guess what I was getting back to is the real revelation, I guess, which came too late, as many revelations do for me. was just the idea that the amount of work that needs to be done in order to use these social media platforms as tools is not being done. A chainsaw is a tool, but it also can cause horrible mayhem. Well, too many people are out there waving their chainsaws over their heads, screaming bloody murder.

Magda: I think also like you see that when people leave Facebook or, you know, wherever else they're leaving and that they go like, oh, everybody's going to Blue Sky. Right. I haven't gotten the handle of Blue Sky yet. I don't know how to crack it to get any kind of engagement. And engagement is my jam. Like I'm not there to read anything. things posted by other people. I'm there to have conversations. And if I'm posting stuff and nobody ever responds to it, that's not any good use of my time.

Doug: Well, you could just be a reply guy.

Magda: What? I could be a reply guy?

Doug: Yeah. You can engage with people and start talking to people and Eventually. I mean.

Magda: I do when people post things that I think I have something worthwhile to say about, but like, I'm not an audience member, right? Like I'm somebody who has something to say.

Doug: I don't think Bluesky is going to do it for you because you've worked so hard on your Facebook community. People know you and there's an overarching aphorism that says don't engage on social media because you're going to find some lunatic who's going to draw you into something that you don't want to be a part of.

Magda: Right.

Doug: You've worked hard enough to avoid that Facebook community, but starting over on Bluesky is a whole other issue.

Magda: If Bluesky functioned the way Facebook does, it wouldn't be an issue at all. Because remember, I had a leg up on Facebook because I had been a relatively successful blogger. So when everybody who read blogs got onto Facebook and bloggers decided whether they were going to accept their readers as friends on Facebook or not, I had a whole bunch of people. I mean, that's why I have over a thousand personal friends on Facebook is because I was a blogger. If I hadn't written a blog, there are, I don't know, 300, 400 people that I wouldn't be friends with on Facebook. But if Bluesky's function was so that you just found the people you knew and then you were like talking in a loop with all these people, same as on Facebook. I wouldn't be having this problem of like, oh my God, there's no feedback, right? Because people would be giving me feedback right away.

Doug: No, and feedback is great. And I want to interject here and say that we did put the GoFundMe for Robert on Facebook and got a wonderful response from it. It does have its uses and it serves a great purpose. And now it just breaks my heart to see how many GoFundMes are out for people who lost everything in California. Yeah. I was thinking about this, about the differences between how you and I use Facebook. And I'm wondering how much of it stems from you're a woman and I'm a man. Because I do love Instagram. I love it so much that I put a timer on it to make sure I don't use it too much. And it's been great.

Magda: Right. Yeah.

Doug: But one of the things I love about Instagram is when you say you look at my stories and there's a term for that. They call it “pebbling.”

Magda: You're pebbling or I'm pebbling when I look at your stories?

Doug: No, when I put stories out there, that's apparently called pebbling. The idea of penguins share pebbles with each other to show affection or to flirt with each other and stuff.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: And since male penguins take care of eggs, maybe there's something to that. Right. You can take the boy out of dad 2.0, but you can't take the dad 2.0 out of the boy. But as fun as pebbling is, it's impersonal. It doesn't show details about my life. It's very cut off. I mean, granted, you get a sense of what my sense of humor is. Right. And my Instagram is private. So I know almost everybody after I shut the door. I like the fact that it's kind of a hermetic space in many ways. And people can look at something I put out there and they can respond to me. And that's how we stay in touch. Whereas Facebook, you post a lot more, but you also post in text and you post about your feelings. You post about in a much more personal way. Which I feel very wary of. I don't want to share any more personal details on that website anymore.

Magda: Right.

Doug: And I'm wondering if that's just me being male or me being paranoid and me being both.

Magda: Partly it's you being paranoid because you used to share a lot of details of your life on the blog.

Doug: Right. Well, but that was then and this is now. I mean.

Magda: But OK, I mean, the reason people gave to that GoFundMe for Robert is not because they know me and they were like, oh, I want to help your kid out. It's because I've been telling them Robert stories for years until he shut me down a year ago. But I mean, for the first 21 years of his life, I was telling people stories about him. You know, it wasn't like exposing everything he did. but you know, he, he's a little bit of a performer. So when he would say something funny, I would say, can I post this on Facebook? He'd be like, “sure, go ahead.” Sometimes he reword it.

Doug: Right. That's what I would do too. I would post quotes of his, and I love when they come back as Facebook memories. Again, another positive thing. I mean, this is like, you know, 12 years ago, he'd say something pithy and I'd remember where I was when he said it. Those definitely help sometimes when the nest feels particularly empty.

Magda: But I mean, people gave to that GoFundMe because they were giving to him because they felt like they knew him. They knew his whole personality. I mean, every weird scrape he's gotten into, like, you know, he licked the floor of the subway. He put the towel in the oven. He went to turn a lobster boat into an Airbnb. Right. You know, like, I mean, all of this stuff, all the classic Robert stories, people really felt like they knew him.

Doug: So you think I am part paranoid to be sharing things that can be used to market to me?

Magda: I don't know what you think is going to happen. Okay, this may be because I am the only person on this planet with my name, right? Like there was some article, some, I don't know, this was like five years ago, where you could search the frequency and the location of your last name in the world. And I put in my last name, P-E-C-S-E-N-Y-E. And there are 331 people in the entire world with that last name. Wow. So if you have found some information about me, it is extremely likely to be true. Like there's no way to hide that. So I guess I have realized that since the internet was a thing, like if I put it out there, people are going to know it somehow. Like there's really not a whole lot of privacy.

Doug: And that's an interesting point because you asked me, what am I afraid of happening? And one thing that comes to mind is like, I will never post anything health related anywhere because I know how Facebook or anybody else would sell that data to an insurance provider or something else and find a way to use that against me.

Magda: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I don't either. I mean, I post things that I think are extremely common, right? Like I've been posting about having depression for a long time. I post about having ADHD. I post the shit out of perimenopause and menopause.

Doug: Once or twice.

Magda: Not because I need to talk about them for myself, but because I feel like I'm an object lesson. Like I know there are other people out there who feel horrible in the midst of these things. And I want them to know that they can talk to me about it. But also I post about it and other people are going to be like, oh my God, me too. So now those other people who don't post are like, wow, there are actually a lot of this. I am not alone. And then people come up with solutions for things, right? That's not just amazing for me, but that's amazing for everybody else, people who have solutions. So I am always thinking in terms of Cost benefit. And sometimes the benefit is that it's really funny. Sometimes the benefit is that somebody's got an answer to something that I don't know. Sometimes the benefit is I want people to know they're not alone. Sometimes the benefit is I'm trying to find out if I'm alone in something. Magda: But I'm not just posting to get likes or to get clicks because that's not actual feedback.

Doug: That's not actual life.

Magda: You know what I mean? The only feedback those clicks are is that the algorithm has shown my post to some people.

Doug: I hate Likes so much. I hate that you can return a text. You can click something that says so-and-so liked your text that said this. Because it even lets them off the hook for having to say anything in response.

Magda: I know. Well, and it's especially funny because only people on iPhone can click the emojis. And so people on Android, the response you get is liked. And then they quote the post or whatever it was that they liked or liked. loved or laughed at or something like that. So the other day I was texting with a friend of mine who also speaks Polish, which I don't think about all that often, but I posted something and she sent back Dodano Smiecz do Obraska. And I'm like, what does this mean? Is this like an aphorism in Polish that she's sending me to look up to, like, try to figure out what what's going on? And I said, what does that mean? And then she was responding to what I had said earlier. And then she said, oh, wait, I forget that reactions probably don't work correctly from Apple to Android. So she sent me a screenshot of what she had sent. And she had just put the ha ha ha react on the photo I had sent her. And it came back in Polish. And so I sent her what I had received. And she said, what it said was, in Polish, give smile to picture or give laugh to picture. You know, she sometimes texts in Polish and sometimes in English. And so I guess her phone had just picked Polish for me, possibly because of my last name.

Doug: Well, and I think we've, you know, I asked, am I paranoid or just male? And I forgot to ask, am I just old? Because whenever I decry the fact, in my head anyway, that all of these ways to communicate have obfuscated and truncated and made conversation that much more confusing, that just makes me feel old. Because I like putting the captions on the TV. And I like reading books so much I can't be marketed to.

Magda: You cannot be marketed to, really?

Doug: When I'm reading a book, yeah. I can't get a pop-up ad.

Magda: When you're reading a book, it doesn't inspire you to read other books. Do you never read nonfiction?

Doug: I'm not told about all the horrible side effects from moderate to severe colitis.

Magda: Okay, so I read a lot of nonfiction. And I come out of every book with a list of like three to six other books to read. It's genteel marketing.

Doug: We could split hairs about whether it means to be marketed to or to instill ideas in. Yes, a book leading to another book is one thing, but that guy singing the Burger King jingle. Have you seen that article that says now there's a trend that people are making ads that are purposely impossible to listen to as a way to make them memorable?

Magda: [Sings jingle] Oh. That one?

Doug: Yeah, I'm going to cut that out because I wouldn't impose that on anyone. In fact, I tell you what, I'm going to mute that part.

Magda: Oh, God.

Doug: I mean, they just stopped caring. Anyway, but as far as Facebook goes, I think I have to make a choice. I haven't put in the work on my Facebook community as much as you have. I worked really hard on Twitter and I have left Twitter. To watch that go was really hard because I felt that I put a lot of work into that. And Dad 2.0 was even bigger. That was like 30,000. And we had a blue check.

Magda: Before you just paid money for a blue check?

Doug: Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, watching something you made disappear is hard. And I don't have the energy, I don't think. I really get so much more out of individual face-to-face greetings than I think that's where I have to put my energy now.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: As much as I want to stay in touch with all of my friends that I've made all over the country, all over the world. And I miss them too. And I've told you, going on Facebook now, all it does is remind me of all these wonderful people I'll never see again.

Magda: I get that. You know, there are a lot of ways to find... Community to create community. You know, I started the group hugs group because I knew there were people who were just going to be not feeling good about social media who wanted to just talk face to face with people on Zoom. I know a lot of people are just moving things to Discord. I have a Discord server that people can join and just talk about random shit if they want to. And I have a book club on Facebook. And we now have a discord site for people who want to keep talking about books in the same way, but didn't want to be on Facebook. So it's sort of like a mirror site, I guess. I think people just have to pick what feels good and comfortable to them.

Doug: And that includes being okay with being a part of this absolutely nefarious business model. And that's the part I struggle with most.

Magda: I mean, when have people not been part of an absolutely nefarious business model? You know, like my mom talks about when she grew up, people really thought you could trust the government and that you could trust other companies and stuff like that. And then she said, realizing that I was born in the middle of the Vietnam War and Watergate, there was never a time when I was alive when anybody thought that you could trust the government, private enterprise, anything like that.

Doug: Right, but this is different. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about being the product.

Magda: We've always been the product.

Right, but as they say in The Social Dilemma, which I want to re-watch now, on Netflix, people are monetizing your data. Being the product itself is the part that I'm having the biggest issue with.

Magda: I don't think that them collecting your data is the biggest problem. I think the problem is they're not doing anything smart or reasonable with it. If they were serving you nonstop videos of people unfucking stuff, you would be happy that they knew that that's what you wanted to see. The problem is Mark Zuckerberg has all of your information and he still does things that... are the opposite of what you want. So like, why does he even bother getting that information if he's just going to say any dumb, stupid thing that comes into his head that makes him think that Donald Trump is going to love him now and not go after him and nobody's going to go after him like they went after TikTok and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the extent now that all of his LGBTQ employees, because he didn't bother to run it past anybody else in the organization first, They are all like, wait, what? And who knows what they're going to do? Can they walk out? Can they put any kind of pressure? But, you know, he's just a one man show. He's the same loser kid who bought the structure of Facebook from the Winklevoss twins. Because girls wouldn't talk to him. He still doesn't understand. Like he thought somehow he was going to be able to force girls to talk to him if he had the Facebook instead of thinking, “oh, I could have the Facebook. I could figure out what girls want to talk about and then get them to talk to me organically.”

Doug: Well, I got to say now I feel I might even force myself to listen to a bit of this podcast appearance of his on Joe Rogan.

Magda: What?

Doug: I know. But I mean, people are talking about it in terms of how at some point he said Facebook “needs more masculine energy.”

Magda: You know who needs more masculine energy? He does. Because he's nothing but a little slimy worm.

Doug: Yes. That was the joke. Are you stepping down, then? I mean, you've had a nice glow up and you do martial arts, but…

Magda: He's like toothpaste without a tube. “Wet sandwich” is a compliment to him.

Doug: More like anchovy paste without a tube. And I love anchovy paste, but I don't want a big blob of it on my countertop. So use your anchovy paste in moderation as you see fit or avoid it at all. In fact, here's what I want to do. As we end this, I'd like you to post this in your community with the headline, Mark Zuckerberg is like a big puddle of anchovy paste and see how long it stays up.

Magda: Oh, my God.

Doug: All right. Well, happy 2025. And thank you for listening to episode 66 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been Facebook. Should I stay or should I go? When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe there for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter, Friday Flames, every other Friday. We'll be posting this on Facebook and I'll keep pebbling on Instagram and we'll put a bunch of links in there and I'm going to rewatch The Social Network and The Social Dilemma. And God, do I have to listen to Joe Rogan? I don't know.

Magda: No, do whatever you can do to avoid listening to Joe Rogan.

Doug: Listen to her. She's smart. All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.