Facebook Groups...

I got a link to a group on Facebook from a likeminded friend.  She sent me a listing for this homesteading for singles group.  I will admit, I did the barest of research before I hit the join button. 

Here is what I thought...

This group is about single people getting together to build sustainable mutually beneficial communities in nature, off the grid together, separately.

Here is what I have seen so far...

A dating application for people who are living like the Unabomber.

The posts are either hilarious or so wonderfully weird that I am kinda hooked.  I mean, in a spectator kind of way.  The posts are endless, which is ironic that so many people who are committed to living off the grid are affording themselves so much time on the internet...it makes me laugh, hard.

Some of the posts are not so thinly disguised bids for a life partner.  Some are seeking like minded commune builders and there are others where I am not even sure what they are talking about.

After only a couple of days, I feel the way I do every time I join a dating site.  Except this group I didn’t join thinking it had anything to do with dating.  I thought it was more about building sustainable, off grid communities of like minded individuals.  Nope, just a dating group for people who are having a hard time living in the grid.  Which I completely understand and can relate to...me too!

I have to say that as a spectator it is fascinating.  But if I were to engage (I am not going to engage) it makes me despondently sad for our species.  Only human beings could create technology that has the ability to bring so many people into proximity with each other and then use it in a way that will never ever provide any kind of sustainable relationship or intimacy.

I am left with a resounding soul hole...again, still.

How can so many of us be seeking connection, love, partnership, companionship and be so very lost in our search? And keep choosing angles and ideas that seem to offer us a good chance at moving forward in a positive way, only to engage and find ourselves subject to repeated disappointment and dissatisfaction daily? WTF?

There is something fundamentally flawed in online connection.  I am not sure I can tell you exactly what it is, but there is something that is inherently broken in a two dimensional connection.  And I am not sure that can ever be remedied.  I mean, I am a hopeless romantic (please don’t tell anyone) so I hold out hope for us as a species but...I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that I am losing faith faster than I can build it up.

Something about the online world flattens us to a relational devastation.  I am not sure why, I absolutely know how.  And yet, despite this avowed belief, I still attempt to use the online world to find connection...this time thinking I was going to find something else completely.

I commend the attempt but find no comfort in the result.  In fact, the result leaves me with a despondency that I can barely survive.  All these people who love nature and animals and the wild world, online spending hours of their lives attempting to find someone to enjoy the natural world with...when the digital world can only really bring you more into its world in the end.  I mean, you have to be online to see who else is online and then you have to stay online for longer and longer periods of time in order to increase your odds of finding someone.  

Nope.  I am out.

So this group shall fall to the fate of all other groups I have joined on Facebook...a name on a list of places I never visit or spend any time.  They will appear in my feed and I will scroll through them as I pass through Facebook daily.  Which is a dark admission indeed.  I have never been on a social media diet mostly because I publish this on social media and I use it for work...so it seemed like it would be counter productive to cut it out.  But I have to say my interest in screen time is waning rapidly...

I guess what really resonates with me is that I am not a joiner.  There isn’t a version of my future that has me living in some communal situation other than perhaps with my family and that ever elusive partner.  Mostly, no matter how much I resist it, I feel like I am going to live alone, with cats, and other furry friends in a wooded area, in some version of solitude.  It isn’t necessarily what I want, but it is what speaks to me.  Every year that passes leaves me feeling more content in my own company and less and less content in the company of others.  I have become quite selective in who I spend my time with...and still prioritize my alone time over my social time.

I guess I just can’t do groups...Facebook or otherwise.  Ok, ok, I accept it.  And so will leave the homesteading group to sit idle in all the other groups I have joined in a fit of delusional belief that I am someone other than who I am...

Again, still...