#Blogtober Day 4: The Night the Lights Went Out in Menlo Park.

So Facebook and Instagram just went down, as you probably know.

I haven’t looked up any theories as to why. I’m sure it’s just a technical glitch–someone accidentally deleted a bracket in the code or something.

I have to admit, in the back of my mind, I’m imagining some sort of white-hat hacker op to take down the platform after the recent Wall Street Journal series of articles airing Facebook’s internal memos and studies about the mentally corrosive effect of their product on teenagers.

Can’t you just imagine the movie: A middle-aged man (who “went straight” after spending his 20’s getting into more and more dangerous hacks) settles down and starts a legitimate business in cyber security. He gets married, starts a family, and then has a child who gets into social media in his or her early teens only to be cyber-bullied into doing something drastic and permanent. Enraged and heartbroken, the grieving father exacts revenge on the multi-billion dollar company that profits (in his mind) off of the psychic desolation of bullied and broken children. He runs his “last big job”–a complete takedown of the very social media platform that contributed to his child’s tragic fate.

Basically, it’s a mix of Taken and Mr. Robot. Naturally, the film would star Liam Neeson. (Just kidding. Imagine the extended shots of Neeson pecking away with two fingers at the keyboard while squinting at the screen. No thanks.)

Honestly, I should have written this up as a short story. Oh well.

I mean, this whole thing will likely be over by tonight anyway. Facebook will figure out what’s going on and fix it. The boomers will go back to sharing memes to show they truly love or hate ___. The millenials will log back into Insta. And life will go on as it has before.

But what if–and just hear me out–what if it didn’t?

What if we all come up for air from our phones for a bit and realize, Hey, I don’t need this thing. In fact, the further away from it I get, the better I feel about myself and the world around me.

I mean, that’s total nonsense–no one would ever think that. But, I’m just saying, “what if?”

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna go jump on Twitter to talk about all this.