On compulsion
Everyone respects and has air kissed everyone else, no one harbors hard feelings, the whole burning bush in a mousetrap is passing into one more half-forgotten legend of the internet, except for this:
Dear folks who compare using Favrd to having a problem with drugs and alcohol, please stop.
Checking to see if people liked your joke on the internet is not a problem. Compulsively checking to see if people liked your joke on the internet is hardly a problem in the sense of, say, compulsive hand-washing or coupling or masturbating. If checking to see who liked your joke on the internet is a problem you actually struggled with in 2009, consider yourself wildly blessed and thank God whether you believe in him or not. If you truly believe that, by closing Favrd without notice, Dean Allen freed you from a self-destructive cycle of self-abuse, don’t be surprised when your therapist bitch-slaps you.
Losing one’s home was a problem in 2009. Losing one’s job was a problem in 2009. Checking a website to see who liked one’s joke does not even make the top 1,000,000 problems of 2009.
Lying awake shaking and crying because you have no more cocaine or heroin or alcohol is a problem. Not caring if that next hit kills you, and quietly hoping that it does—there is a problem, and shutting off a website won’t fix it.
Hoping people will understand your joke does not compare to any real suffering on this planet of suffering, no matter how out-of-control you may think you were, and no matter how grateful you are that someone fixed you by shutting off their website.
And, just so you know, recovery doesn’t mean the drug dealer disappears. It means walking past the guy who sold you dope and not needing it any more.
Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=3225
Filed under: Favrd
Wonderful.
That was beautiful in a weird way. Almost zen like, totally threw off my morning, but that’s not really a problem.
Enough said. Let’s all step back and remember what really matters and what doesn’t.
DEAR FOLKS WHO COMPARE COMPULSIVELY MASTURBATING TO HAVING A PROBLEM WITH DRUGS AND ALCOHOL, PLEASE STOP.
My like button isn’t big enough–I don’t even need to know what the hell Favrd is (or was) [I woulda thought he was the Conan-like character from a bunch of mid-century Fritz Leiber novels].
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Well said. There are people out there with real problems and are not solved by the source disappearing, just as you said;
I lost my job this year and have been struggling to get back on my feet so the sentiment of this post really rings true to me.
This makes me glad inside. Suddenly the fifteen things I have to do before I can get any real work done seem almost pleasant. I will have a little laugh, thank my lucky stars, and be on my way. Thanks!
Quite right. But kudos, too, to any dealer who is compelled by good conscience to quit dealing. Dean included.
The internet, and its denizens are a fickle lot. Although I didn’t have a lot of reading time on Favrd, I don’t see what all the hullabaloo is about. He closed it, which is the right of the owner.
Having dealt with a few “compulsions” in my short history and sordid past, I can safely say, that people that compare a site on the internet with an addiction problem such as drugs and alcohol are a sad lot.
When you’re in the gutter, lying face down in the dirt outside your own home, on your front lawn for your neighbors to see after a binge and a night of debauchery when you’ve locked yourself out of your own home. I dare anyone to compare an addiction like that to some pithy web site (not saying Favrd was/is pithy, just the generalization).
Losing your college money in a Vegas alcohol-fueled gambling spree far outcries some site that has jokes on it, in my opinion.
Having your children taken away for a time and your visits with them monitored for months because of your insistence on tipping back more than “quite a few”… a site shutting down pales in comparison in my book.
The internet and its denizens truly are a fickle bunch, some can even look stupid when they really show what their priorities are. I presume Mr. Allen did this because of reasons that he himself (and maybe some others he is close to) know of. That tells me he is putting things ahead of Favrd and setting some priorities in his life. I applaud him for that.
Those that think drugs/alcohol/addictions are a joke, need to take a long hard stare into a mirror and ask themselves, the next time they see someone lying in the gutter, they’d better praise whomever they revere/worship that it isn’t them, think of how truly lucky & blessed they are.
I do. Every day.
I’ve never seen you so worked up before Z. I feel like Favrd has dominated your thoughts for days now. I say that with no ill will implied at all, it’s just been surprising to see your passion on the subject.
I have to say, one of your best writing so far… emotion, passion, anger, and words.
This post is applicable to all users of ALL social networking apps.
Also, I still just want to know one thing… “What’s next?”
Crikey, who the hell has been saying that?
I Can’t Quit You Baby
Rather not say, but it’s out there.
Something that brought me a little bit of joy in my day was taken away without warning and without a satisfying explanation.
I feel like I’ve been slapped for something I didn’t do.
Naw, my conference is dominating my thoughts, but this Favrd closing business nags at the edges of my consciousness, causing me to write in short bursts during brief intervals of downtime. (And, yes, it bothers me that I am bothered.)
I totally agree with the last sentence of your post.
To the rest of your argumentations we can answer with a sentence written by you, in the comments of a previous post:
What’s the big deal? Everything goes away. Be glad that you enjoyed something good while it lasted.
Clever.
Please go shoot dope or drink around the clock for, oh, about a decade, and if you make it back, tell me if it compared to checking a website to see who liked your joke.
@Lazy KB:
Good point. Give me your money. You’ve enjoyed it long enough.
Very clever.
Please go to live in a village in the south of Zimbabwe for, oh, about a week, and if you make it back, tell me if you still feel disappointed about the closing of FAVRD.
Can anyone help? Honest, unloaded question: who has been saying this?
I’m with Ray. I just want Dean to not let anything out of this bother him so he can go have his next stroke of genius.
Dean:
Several people have taken your crack metaphor and run with it, going so far as to confess that their “compulsive use” of Favrd was a “problem” and that they are grateful to you for shutting it down, because they couldn’t have quit on their own. Others have compared it to an unwanted cigarette habit and, again, thanked you for saving them from the addiction.
And shut it off when it finds an audience?
Alessandro:
When I write about addiction, it’s not a metaphor. I lived it. I’m going to guess Zimbabwe is a metaphor for you—a logic turnaround to slap me with.
I was upset when Dean shut off Favrd because the impermanence of content and community is a problem in our medium—a problem I felt my friend Dean needlessly exacerbated.
I’ve since become disturbed by apologists who compare their use of Favrd to anything as serious as an addiction. As a recovering person, my feelings on the subject are naturally rather strong.
Why are you angry?
“And shut it off when it finds an audience?”
That’s half the fun brother. At least with Dean we know it’s inevitable.
We k n o w what we’re getting ourselves into. It’s not like we’re babes in the wood. This is Dean constantly-evolving-moody-but-likable Allen we’re talking about. Sheeeesh
Yes, Zimbabwe is a metaphor for me, and I understand your reaction and I agree with your point of view.
The meaning of your original comment that I quoted was, if I understood well:
to point out that there are problems much bigger than the problem we are talking about it’s not a fair response to this problem.
It seemed to me that we could take this approach to your last post too: if there is someone that considered a big problem his “addiction” to favrd or twitter or facebook, it’s not a fair answer to point out that the real addictions are others, and real problems are others, for people living in 2009.
Anyway, I understand. The point here is the meaning of the words, and the word addiction is a serious word (by the way, I also know something about it).
I am not angry, and I was not angry. Really. English is not my language and so i couldn’t show with my words that the tone of my comment was very light, and maybe it seemed more aggressive than i wanted it to be. I don’t like to use emoticons to show that I am friendly. I will work to improve my english.
Thank you for your writing.
Neato, but why is it so hard to come up with an example?
Seriously, anyone. ANYONE.
This article and its comments are perhaps a perfect example for arguing either for or against allowing comments on a blog.
Favrd’s closing raises in my mind a persisting question I have about our compulsiveness to save every singular bit of data. So many memories I have are not detailed in any manner, but rather vague impressions, and I savor them, often more so than any backed-up data I have. (That’s not to say I don’t value any of my memory bits. These are just some ponderings for the mix.)
@Ricky:
I’d say a huge component of the “save all data” viewpoint is the inability to know for sure what future generations will find relevant about us, as well as a frightening lack of “hard copy” for much of the Internet. Yes, there’s hundreds of thousands of books being generated on a regular basis, but large chunks of 21st century culture is online-only, and without it’s preservation that aspect of our culture would be lost to descendants trying to put context to the known bits of our lives.
That’s a pretty grandiose statement for something like Favrd, but it’s less about the single product, and more about the pattern that it’s now part of.
@Kyle Good point. Of course, tho, not all of our known history was written. I’m sure our decedents will get their earful of the birth woes of internet culture. And in some ways I might think that preserving our memories through oral tradition might be more secure than archiving our data.
Zeldman, Barnes and, of course, Allen: You’re in a world as far removed from the realities of braod social behavior as Glenn Beck is from political insight. Get out of the house. stop talking to those who already confirm what you think.
Glad you have this forum. Too bad you believe you;re qualified to discuss human behavior in any way. Go program an app, a tool, like Favrd. But don’t whine if people use the tool for something more than it’s original intent. Like shiv your ass to wake you from your sheltered stupor.
Impotent RageBot 3000 is still operating reliably, I see.
[...] Browse People 20 hours ago Kevan Emmott on On compulsion [...]
There’s that word ‘friend’ again. Is this really the way friends communicate these days? Through blog posts and subsequent comments?
How about a phone call or private email, even with these two posts on the subject still published I think a lot of back and forth could have been saved.
@Kyle Weems, absolutely true that we don’t know what data will be useful for the future. While the official stories and news of a culture are often dictated/censored by the rulers/winners, commercial receipts, records of local births and deaths, of real estate and loan transactions, are often what modern historians find most valuable for mining accurate data about the past.
@The guys who don’t understand that a word [social, friend, communicate] can mean two different things in two different contexts: Sometimes a “seal” is a flippered animal. Sometimes a “seal” is something that holds something closed. This doesn’t mean that any use of the former somehow violates or cheapens the latter.
My nephew, who is almost four, likes to play with his plastic cars, but he understands that they aren’t the same as the car he rides in, even though he uses the same word to refer to them. Is his car not real? Of course it’s real. There it is in his little hand, he plays with it, talks with it, does toddler physics experiments with it, loves it. Sometimes he takes a car along to play with when he rides in the car.
Some of my facebook friends really are my friends, in real life. Sometimes they are real-life friends with whom I have no other current correspondence or communication, but our facebook interactions–like two busy suburban neighbors smiling at each other over the fence and taking time to ask a few brief, superficial questions–demonstrate that we are in each other’s thoughts on a regular basis and that we care enough to have some small, digital communication, and that we hope to have more, real-life communication when it’s feasible. Some of my facebook friends are people I have dinner and coffee with several times a week, talk to on the phone, and email one-on-one when discussing matters we don’t care to air before the whole world.
I don’t feel my real-life friendships are cheapened in any way by the addition of an online dimension. In fact, they often facilitate our getting together in real life.
I have other facebook “friends” whom I’ve never met, but with whom I’ve shared enough conversation that I feel I know them a little bit and that I’d be thrilled to meet them in real life. Is that fake? Well, let’s say mutual-friend R, instead of facilitating my online socializing and writing-project-sharing with my new fbook friend S, had simply told me stories about her, recounted examples of her brilliant wit, assured me we’d crack each other up and respect each other. Would my interest in meeting her be fake then?
Meanwhile, I spend roughly 40 hours a week working with people who don’t know me nearly as well. There’s nothing tragic or phony or inappropriate about that: my office-mate doesn’ t really need to know my sordid history of drug abuse and recovery or my tedious little heartbreaks or the emotional trauma of the month in my circle of friends and family. We get along fine, like and respect each other, make each other laugh from time to time, but we don’t have the kind of professional relationship that leads to that kind of intimate friendship. The belief that every social, work, or casual relationship must either be as thoroughly honest, intimate, and intense as our dearest friendships or else be superficial or cheap is a characteristic of the adolescent, willing to limit the world to those people he likes and cares about.
Jesus, Jeff. I understand why you might be upset about this if you’ve gone through difficult experiences, but in the comments here you’ve gone from expressing anger towards people who’ve relentlessly exaggerated their Favrd issues to outright insulting anybody with the wit to remind you that they’re not the only people blowing this out of proportions.
If somebody’s wasting a lot of time and accruing a lot of bad vibe because they’re spending their time seeing if people like their little e-quips, then perhaps they are happy that’s been taken away from them. No, it’s not as bad as drug addiction, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something that’s grated them in a way so that they’re relieved it’s gone. And flame all you want at the people saying you should be happy for the time Favrd gave you: Everything stops eventually, and if you enjoyed the ride then maybe you should focus on that. The fact that you’re getting so angry/irritated at this maybe says you should take a step back, remember all the other communities that’ve closed down that you miss today, and start looking ahead to the next vibrant, witty, joyous gathering. Hell, start one: Figure out how to appeal to all the folks you miss and get them clapping each other on the back.
@Dean, because nobody else has said anything: I know Jeff was getting pissed off at somebody on the last comment thread regarding Favrd. Brett Trout says:
To which Jeff says:
So no evidence whatsoever. You know I love you Jeffrey but I’m going to have to call bullshit on this. I respect you have a well-reasoned axe to grind on the addiction issue – it can be seen from space – and I agree that a direct comparison to drug and alcohol addiction is faulty. But direct correlations, such as you describe, have come only from, well, you. And the assertion that anyone anywhere has been transformed out of dysfunction by the closure of a stupid website is entirely of your own invention.
Pourquoi tant de haine?
Dean, I’m sorry, I was flying across the US today. I’ll send you a private email naming names, since you are so bent on this. I’m not going to name names publicly, because, enough.
think a lot of people are struggling to understand why this had to happen, and the argument Dean Allen made that ended with ’selling crack’ threw many of us into bad analogy land.
I get your frustration with waking up one day to find Favrd shuttered and it’s content hidden, I hope that there is some way the archival content can be open sourced, some great times in there, an awesome juried collection. It seems wrong to hide it away, something like burning books. Should be in public domain for sure.
@Dean Allen – It doesn’t take a heck of a lot of sleuthing, sheesh.
Great post. Thanks.
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I hope Twitter shuts down tomorrow. That’ll give you something to write about.
I must confess, I have never heard of Favrd. Don’t know if I should feel happy or sad… I choose happy.
Everyone here is kind of right, and in a way we’re all in the same boat (even those who, like myself, never knew Favrd): we are all creatures of habit. I’d argue that choice and compulsion are wider continuums than they appear on the surface. Some people are capable of making more difficult and integral choices than others (thankfully). Some choices are unfortunately made for us, and those on one end of that experience spectrum have an easier time dealing than those on the other. I’m not saying that perspective is the only difference between a booze addiction and a Favrd addiction, but to some who’ve just found their online voice, and Favrd was their only medium for its expression at the time, waking up and finding it gone might have seemed pretty significantly life-altering. Regardless, “Let’s move on” is not only a great lesson to learn, it’s the only thing we can do.
Hmmmm… thoughts:
Favrd ~was~ addictive, in the sense that the internet is addictive, because we humans are far more like lab rats than we care to admit. We will work for gold stars. Rewards – especially when they become even slightly more tangible, and therefore give us the ability to keep score, are powerful tools that can be used for good (ask any school teacher) or for control, or can cause compulsive and/or even addictive behavior.
I enjoyed reading Favrd for a good belly laugh and I’m sorry it’s gone. I agree that ephemeral content (Geocities, anyone?) is a problem – Favrd was like my library of funny things, and my own Favrd page was my little record that even I said some pretty funny things at times. It made me feel good.
Some people were getting pretty annoying in their begging for gold stars from their followers – pitiful, really. There was a simple solution to that: UNFOLLOW. Those same people had such needy egos, however, that they also used services to tell them who unfollowed – and would DM you to ask why… ugh. There is a good reason Twitter doesn’t inform you of these things! I finally got so tired of being in the endless cocktail party of the “Favrd crowd” that I created a new ID and started over. Because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by unfollowing. So I abandoned @naturallygeeky and started @naturallygeeky2.
So… I guess in some ways I’m a little relieved that Favrd is gone, but those people will find another Favrd and the endless cocktail party will continue. I just fell in with the wrong crowd and couldn’t hold my own in the funny one-up-manship game, so it’s my own fault, not Favrd’s.
In most other ways I’m very disappointed that yet another good site with user generated content has simply vanished. It’s as if I went to the library and one of my favorite books was removed. Or a better metaphor is that my favorite magazine stopped publishing. And all back issues were destroyed. I hate losing access to content.
@Maggie:
So do I. In theory, everything published on the web stays on the web. In practice, great content goes away every day. Often, it can’t be helped—for instance, when a company or organization fails, it’s unreasonable to expect that they’ll keep their content online. It’s annoying, though, when content disappears that didn’t have to. And this has always been my beef with my old pal Dean. By my lights, he creates some of the most interesting content on the web—and for that, I am grateful. But he has a tendency to pull the plug just as things are getting interesting, and this will always bother me, whether it’s his right to do so or not.
In the case of Favrd, there are plenty of people and organizations who would have kept it going if we had been approached. But enough about that.
As to people begging for stars, gaming the system, etc., I had no idea any of that was going on, and I can see how it would (a). make Favrd a drag for Dean to maintain and (b.) make it less fun for readers and participants.
It should come as no surprise. Leaderboards on the web inevitably stimulate needy behavior.
Leaderboards are radioactive; they don’t stimulate certain kinds of undesirable behavior among certain needy individuals; they actually change industries and create (and destroy) fortunes. Consider how Digg has created an all-or-nothing paradigm in terms of page views, escalated news organizations’s already troubling tendency to dig up scandal instead of actual news in order to pander to the LCD and get the most ad views, and so on. Love it, hate it, or anything in-between, Digg has changed the news industry.
Favrd was no Digg, but as a leaderboard, it inevitably triggered certain behaviors among some participants. I wouldn’t compare them to needing drugs—no one who has needed drugs would—but I can understand seeing these behaviors as unhealthy, and wishing to disassociate oneself from a product that encouraged them.
The trouble, of course, is that plenty of people enjoyed Favrd as a form of entertainment and a game—it helped some of us understand, and others of us explain, what Twitter might be good for—and to have it taken from us because some people “couldn’t handle it” feels wrong and sad to me.
But enough, and more than enough.
Dean had me asphyxiated reading about a hyper-attractive couple in a French grocery on my ex’s Packard Bell back in college. I also remember, fondly, hoarding a library terminal, throwing off his site’s layout by writing CSS in the textarea when he opened the site to comments, only to see my styling disappear overnight. I was proud to play that minuscule role in Textpattern’s development. I thought we all got back then that it was ephemera, and that that was half the thrill.
This is not to say I didn’t miss Textism when it disappeared. Dean made me want to write, and to write code, and to write both well. The site and its author shaped a part of me. I’m grateful for that, and I grieved a little when they went offline, but the memories of that starting point are enough. Dean never owed me anything. I took it as the gift it was — free, no strings, liable to disappear in a minute.
The medium makes no guarantee what’s here today will be here tomorrow. There’s nothing permanent about digital technology. These tools were built for storing data and for changing data, and change means modifying and overwriting and deleting. The destructive mechanism is in the tools. It’s half of what they’re made to do. We don’t have much ground to complain when that functionality is actually used.
I don’t care what Dean does or doesn’t do to the sites he makes or the communities they foster. I care that so many people lack the will to let them go. He proved his point about dependence by taking Favrd down, and I think behind that point, there’s a larger point left to be made about permanence and the web.