dreams of a gay myspace killer

[2000 words | 7 minutes ]


I spend a lot of time wondering what it would look like if Facebook were rooted in the science of relationships and positive psychology instead of capitalism and the science of addiction.

What if it were not built out of a Harvard white man’s rolodex of weak ties?

What if it were not evolved from a jilted college boy’s hot-or-not revenge scheme?:

 Logging on to his blog, he created an entry titled “Harvard Face Mash: The Process.” His plan was as simple as it was vindictive: create a site called Facemash.com, hack into Harvard’s directory, download photographs of his classmates and post them online next to photos of farm animals to rate who was more desirable.

He began like any other hurt schoolboy. “Jessica A— is a bitch,” he wrote. “I need to think of something to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough, now I just need an idea.


If “a "face book" is a student directory featuring photos and basic information,” one way to queer it would be to include less basic information, to make it more of a LittleBlackBook.

I feel like what I wan to know about my social network and what Facebook can tell me are only occasionally overlapping things. I want to know:

  1. How do I best contact you?

    1. Email, here, text, phone call?

  2. When should I reach out? When should I not? Should I reach out at all?

    1. Are you responsive if so? Do you log in often?

      1. I don’t need you to be available right now, but it would be nice to know if you’re ignoring me, busy, or as sporadic at communication as I am.

      2. Can technology help us combat the fundamental attribution error? Or does it create new modes of misunderstanding?

  3. How well do we know each other? What can I know of you given that? What should I know of you for our relationship to thrive?

    1. You shouldn’t have to share any of your contact information with me, but will you? What level of trust will it indicate?

    2. I think it’s a reasonable boundary to only allow close friends to know one’s phone number, or for only trusted friends to know when you’re on vacation, never the prospective burglars on the outer rings of your social group.

    3. Humans don’t practice privacy as a public/private binary, but social media has yet to grasp that fact. The closest they come is to distinguish unidirectional relationships from mutual ones, and “friends” from “friends of friends.”

  4. What are your three signs? Or your love languages? Or your MBTI? Maybe even your StrengthsFinder? Or enneagram? Which personality rubrics do you prefer, if any?

    1. But this, again, is something for which I care more or less depending on nature of our relationship. For most people, I will not be reviewing your conflict style to think out how to apologize to you or reviewing your communication style before checking in after a worryingly cryptic post of yours.

    2. But I want to take character notes! Why is there no place in social media to note what you have learned of others that you wish not to forget, like their dietary restrictions, anniversary dates, left-handedness, or love of gecko-themed memorabilia?

  5. What roles are you looking to fill in your support network? Do you only have space in your life for activity buddies? For career colleagues? Or do you have the space in your life for more close friends?

    1. If our hobbies line up then, then are we near each other? What which of your favorite concerts are playing when? What exercises are you joining where? How can we solidify this relationship through action?

    2. Were you, like me, subject to a peripatetic childhood? Are you therefore willing to build deeper adult bonds than most may need?

    3. Or do you have childhood friends who will always come first? Will I always be relegated to an outer peripheral ring in your social network?

    4. Do you have a “back home” to return to? Do you want reminders of back home?

      1. Why does Facebook assume we most want to connect with those we have already known? Does it exist in a world where the past holds no trauma? Why does it carelessly recommend those I don’t ever want to speak to again?

      2. Do we not all contain multiple selves? Is the idea of flattening every tie into a “friend,” no matter how strong the relationship, not also repellant to you? Pretending all relationships are flat doesn’t make it true, any more than pretending that all Americans are middle class establishes it as a more equal nation. 

      3. Why is the algorithm a black box of unknowns? An inscrutable god that creators pray to? Why can’t we tweak the weights in algorithmic considerations? I want to see my closest friends latest post regardless of how recent they posts!

      4. The answers to many of these questions can only be suggested by social media, I know, inferred by the viewer. We can’t have too much of the wrong kind of vulnerability. But still, how do we connect those who want deep ties with each other? Lord knows they need more than an algorithm that detect suicidal language. I suppose that other apps have tried, and yet...

  6. Do you actually even like me as a person?

    1. I wish social networks observed who engaged with the greatest percentage of your posts and whose posts you engage with most often to knit ties of reciprocity. I think this every time I am shown the people the platform deems important rather than the people most important to me.

    2. In a perfect world, the algorithm would also detect hatewatchers, antifans, stalkers, bullies, and other dangerous interactions to limit their engagement.

  7. Can I safely ask you any of this? Can you safely tell me any of this?

    1. It might be dangerous for a platform to observe your log-in times and response habits, and to mark you responsive/unresponsive or some yellow light status between the two. It might be dangerous for an app to know when someone is likely isolated and vulnerable, or especially bleeding-heart and idealistic.

    2. Why do we live in a world where the most convenient technologies are subverted and used against us? Why must capitalism destroy utopia from the inside before it is even built?

People rightly laughed when Facebook moved into the matchmaking space, but that’s because it never did even a passable job of matching making platonic connections. It’s strange that APIs only let you sign in more easily while collecting your friend data and personal data, how APIs allow Facebook to remain an inviolate hub for personal information instead of a mutual give-and-take of plugins, addons, extensions.

Its word analysis is wielded to pinpoint the perfect ads to show us all, but could be used to identify which friends you should deepen your relationships with. Rather than directing us to look at the popular, biggest, most engaging/enraging things; algorithms could identify which things match your values, mood, wishes, needs.

In short, they should put more work into making curation easy, responsive, and decentralized.

(My hot take is that all popularity is a form of centralization, however.)

Rather than the whiplash of seeing newborn announcements, police assault videos, global crises in headline, and metaironic memes with a mayfly lifespan all colliding into each other, maybe Grammarly-style tone detectors could suggest post categorizations that people could either accept or insert their own. Those categories could be used to filter the timeline: I may want only to see pet photos today, but tomorrow I may review which of my queer friends in crisis are holding Gofundmes. If I’m well enough the day after, I will review everyone’s achievements and life updates.


Actually, profiles should be more like dashboards. 

Maybe it’s the data fiend in me, but I would like social media profiles to be like recipe cards indicating how one wants to be known. I want to add reminders and notes on the back of the card: this person’s birthday is soon and they like vinyl records. They’re vegetarian and we’re going out to eat soon. Roller skating is one of their hobbies and there’s an online sale that may interest them. I want to be able to see how and why we know each other at a glance. I want an interactive directory, a living gratitude list (with the assumption I am glad we met).

In contrast, updates create the expectation that we be constantly logged on to keep up with others, lest flickers of important news be drowned out by an unfiltered flood of amalgamated thoughts. 

I avoid social media because I don’t want to drown in ephemera with variable significance. 

I use social media because I want to understand those I’ve begun to know. 

want to give them homes in my extended mind and find commonalities that allow us all to grow. 

Is it too much to want to know who to turn to?

I know my biases as a neurotic gay leftist are clear in my desires for a social network. When I how I want a social media user face to look and function, I think of something like a pod map:

I also think of the “building a support system” worksheets my therapist had me fill out. They looked a bit like the pod map above but also asked questions like this:

When I realized they had come from a workbook on recovery, I was offended at first—my ability to build and maintain relationships is similar to someone recovering from drug abuse?

But when I thought deeper and connected it to the “loneliness epidemic” here in the US and other nations, I concluded that people in recovery may have to do explicitly what all of us do implicitly. They need to be intentional about building and rebuilding relationships to minimize relapse, and we can all learn from their openness on how to foster relationships that foster our wellbeing.

At this point, I feel no shame about sharing an experience in common with people in recovery. It means I’m not alone. As a wise therapist once sung, Honey, you’re not special cause you’re sad.

Because my eMarxist behind resents social media for showing me the most popular posts over the most relevant ones, TikTok was able to reel me in quickly. It does better at balancing the two and knows that centralized, total-platform popularity is different from popularity-within-a-niche. Young-pretty-people-dancing is assumed to be the bulk of TikTok, but the app has no hesitancy over showing me people with facial disfigurement so long as they are disability activists with insights to share.

That said, I do not use TikTok to meet others, network, and/or deepen ties. I refuse to post on the app. I can’t say if it portends a future of hypercustomization in social media technology, and whether said customization will succeed in connecting people in such a way that their social support networks are adequately filled. I don’t know if microtrends help fight loneliness, or if we are mistaken capitalism for identity once again.

Maybe we are moving away from social media driven by the Pareto principle and that would be good! I want us all to create according to our ability and to receive support according to our needs.

I want more friends willing to go to concerts at least as much as I want to network my way into a new job.

And more than I want to peer across pixels into the staged life of an fairycore influencer, I want those queer friends in crisis to get their fundraising goals met.

[late] National Poetry Month poem #5: for haruko, utena, crona, & and every pink girly i see on the street

for haruko, utena, crona, & and every pink girly i see on the street

I have a date with a screen tonight, images

of dancing light and flat color, painted caves & wonder.

The word root of anime is life, soul, breath

The latinate dead knew how many hands 

it takes to infuse a drawing with movement,

knew how many breaths, recorded or encoded

how flipped cels and tensed muscles trickle soul 

how life hours condense into runtime minutes

I drink through eyes, up nerves down tiled neural pathways

I know shared dreams deeper than I do neighbors,

practice puppylove on another fictional girl. 

Neotenic, sure, like pale axolotls in one wild lake

called subculture. I love the flat teeth and big heads

of our species, love not falling straight from my mother

onto ruminant legs, all lank and fear with no time for nurture. 

No, humanity is a playhouse, every construct make-believe

My tribe are those who make themselves

mimetic to the imaginary, happy simulacra

My being is lightness, airborne, pretty floating signifier

I wax my hair unreal & let my reflection smile.

What a blessing it is to be pink-haired!

Aposematic, sure, we strawberry poison dream girls

gather, sapphic, in cottages, pastel

& live all senses of like: imitation, affection, affectation.

The Old resent us, sure, as the pious did Feuerbach,

as if nostalgia weren't another extrapolated god to kill,

the Good Old Days another despaired projection,

as if landlines brought one closer to the Real,

& rosegold smartphones away from God; vapid, satanic.

We collect godless miracles: candyfloss and dandelion

Plush totems, witch rituals, zodiac and tarot

Lovecore, fairykei, light red joy. Everything is magic here, if one lets it

[late] National Poetry Month poem #4: dental cultures

dental cultures

there's no such thing as a colorblind toothbrush.
the analog and electric, target-bought and mail-ordered

discuss cuisines, agendas, class war

a twin, pink translucent, of the two-pack settles into the faceted glass
in her lover's bathroom, finally. cupmates with a sleek and motored subscription model
she spies joyfully, telepaths to her other at home he loves you

the twins transit different meals--hers rushed, boxed, instant

his clean, co-op, crafted

and their takeout, hotpot, buffet

no brush knows who pays more, only who can or should

a walmart multipack roosts together, house of five
the stingy mothers' eager for some heavenside peace
father's bent-haired with vigor, shortlived
older sister's praiseworthy perfect circles foretell neurodivergence
youngest son's lonely from neglect

they take on veganism, convert to keto or halal

know denture, carry fleck and remnants

pot liquor, basmati rice, rare white chocolate, daily inhaler

homecooking too piquant or pungent for work

they are gifted from dentists, throwaway

or immortal & many-headed, used to caressing

soft holes in the comfort-eaters' enamel

they are worshipped by a city of body flora

from great- and grandparents, genetic recipes.

they know work hours, drinking ages, Fajr and Maghrib,

meet wisdom or baby teeth, summer icee, fermentation, imported cigar,

mourn lost teeth, tussle against a grill

size up techniques--is it weak with ignorance? maid-guided? mother-modeled?

even the unopened have strong thoughts on healthcare

take saliva samples, weigh cortisol,

feel as racism unwinds telomeres,

or must scrub tongues too quick with epithets

taste bile that rises from the stomach

up the pyramid of hate

they boast of their travel cases, airplane food,

the dietary shift of other lands

or are silent with poverty-shame, bodies weak plastic

& as gums soften, as nests are flown

despite all flavors of loss...

Any object loved well for a hundred years gains life, they say.

if our old cleaners bide their time in landfills

--panoptically, they've seen how we speak to each other--

i wonder their verdict if we're due to be judged

[late] National Poetry Month poem #3: a golden state

named for queen Calafia

from khalifa from caliph,

my love is muslim at her core

carrying jasmin & date palm with her

i was born hers, in a stolen land

of milk and honey. jannahic

are her oases, meccan her temper

her sands crossed by parents

caravan of vagrants transients homeless

exiles awelcome. what else is Blackness

beyond a pilgrimage from ash?

our bottleblonde hollywood mother

(permissive, permissible, halal)

lets yajuj & majuj pigs & dogs

run feral through Hidden Hills

lets the quakes rockabye us all

bathes in brimstone & smokescent

& we no longer know who to follow

let each tsunami wash as wudu

let a new variant of faith blaze & bloom

let the mahdi be born tan, soon

here in the home of all sunsets. here

we stand at the end of the earth,

all eyes on us. here is where i shall die