Not Yet a Mancott
I regret to admit that because I am weak, I am still on Facebook*.
I am aware that it is a terrible site, it is owned by a sociopathic billionaire who is content to let his algorithms serve up rationalizations for genocide alongside 15 billion scam ads per day and that in an ideal world I wouldn’t use it.
Likewise, my partner still orders things from Amazon regularly even though Jeff Bezos has taken the Washington Post from one of the world’s most respected newspapers to a fulfillment of their motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.
They say there’s “no ethical consumption under capitalism” because everything you buy supports someone terrible, but there are still some places that especially deserve a lack of support. I quit Twitter not too long after Elon Musk turned it into a nazi hangout with an AI that declared itself Mecha-Hitler. Still not playing the newest Harry Potter game even though I have free access on Gamepass, because I don’t wish to support JK Rowling**.
Likewise it was easy enough for me to cancel my Washington Post subscription, not to host my free newsletter on Substack, and generally not to spend in a way that supports the worst people when there are many readily-available alternatives.
But Facebook is the only way I’m in touch with large numbers of my friends, and I’d miss it if I weren’t there. So there I remain, and I only boycott the easy stuff. Which is why I think of it as only a boycott, and not a mancott.
Not to imply I’m not old. In fact, in a recent column I point out there’s very little difference between me and a man from 1920***. I wouldn’t trade though; I’d miss the Internet too much.
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* given my sedentary lifestyle, I’m still everywhere.
** and, let’s face it, also because I’ve already got an extensive backlog of other games so it costs me very little to have the courage of my convictions in that case.
*** except that he’s probably dead, and I’m not dead YET.