When I first moved to Bowen Island back in 2001, there was a very active discussion board of Bowen Island issues called the Bowen Island Phorum. This was a typical late 1990s bulletin board type website. Locals could join and make posts and sometimes the discussions would cascade over four or five pages with replies into the hundreds on especially contentious or important issues to our little community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although that place drove me crazy with frustration a lot of the time, and I used to issue earnest warnings about the tone of some of our debate, which, probably seemed like naive handwringing to the untrained eye, nevertheless, it was our place owned by one of our neighbours and supported by advertising from our local businesses, which is the only way that the host could afford the hosting fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of us knew each other, and there was the occasional Juventus evening at the pub or the Legion when we would get together with name tags showing our Phorum handles just so we could put a face to the bluster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Facebook became widely used around 2010 discussion at the Phorum dried up completely. The first Facebook group for Bowen Islanders was a buy and sell group which very quickly turned into discussions about other things. Another one of our neighbours then created a page called \u201cBowen Island Everything Else\u201d mostly to take the pressure off the buy and sell page. In short order, that became our de facto community Facebook group. As far as I\u2019m aware every small town and neighbourhood has one now.<\/p>
Once this shift happened conversations at the Phorum shrank down to a handful of participants. Facebook was just too convenient for everyone to use. In the end, this meant that maintaining the Phorum was pointless. There was no reason for local advertisers to spend their money there and the discussions were faster and more modern over on Facebook. At the same time, of course, generational shifts in how we used discussion sites on the web had changed and those of us who began in the 90s were watching the next generation of users connect on the corporate owned social media sites. The Phorum is gone. <\/p>
In the last few months, there has been a lot of conversation amongst my friends and neighbours about leaving social media but the one thing they say that will keep them on Facebook is the connection to our local community. While most have found it easy to leave the the gushing torrent of nonsense that now floods our Twitter timelines, with Facebook we still have connections to neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, here in Canada, Facebook has refused to pay legacy media for publishing their content, something the other social media sites have done the result of this choice by Facebook is that news links cannot be shared in Canada on that platform. And that means that the conversations that happened on Facebook are almost exclusively rumour and opinion.<\/p>
It\u2019s also tragically clear to me that many people in our community who participate in Facebook use that site as their only interface to the worldwide web. When links are shared, often the discussion shows clearly that people haven\u2019t read the posted article. People share things like weather alerts or emergency Information without understanding what it means or how it affects them. I realized last week that nothing I get from Facebook is unique to that site. Between our local emergency services app, news and updates from our municipality, buying the local newspaper, (yes we still have one) I get everything I need. If I want opinions, there\u2019s a small group of people I often meet at a local coffee shop or at the pub with whom I can share wildly misinformed lies and speculations. As you do. <\/p>
So it seems easy enough for me to leave. But as I\u2019ve posted my intention to do so, friends have shared with me their worry that if they leave Facebook, where will they get their local news and stay connected to what\u2019s happening in the community?<\/p>
And this right here is the cost of us all buying the convenience of Facebook at the expense of the hard work of building community. What happens on Facebook is not community. It is an empty calories version of deliberation and belonging. It gives the illusion of connection and conversation while simultaneously acting the same way big box stores do in small towns: by crushing what is local through convenience and lower prices. The community bears the cost. <\/p>
And now, there may legitimately be fewer ways for people to connect locally There is no social media platform as easy to use or widely distributed as Facebook. Starting a local mastodon instance might bring in 10 or 12 early adopters, which still might make it worthwhile to do. Resurrecting the Phorum seems unlikely and there are no alternatives to Facebook, thank God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon reflection, I realized that most of the local people that bug me on Facebook I don\u2019t know in real life. There are folks I have blocked over the years, and I couldn\u2019t even tell you if they live here now. I don\u2019t hear their opinions, I don\u2019t know who they are in real life, and I realize now that any irritation they have given to me is basically spectral. They are ghosts in my life. If I were to run into them at the coffee shop or the pub, I would probably like them, because most people around here are likable, and funny and strange and when you meet them face-to-face, it doesn\u2019t really matter what small part of them rages against one politician or another from time to time. When they\u2019re helping you out out of a ditch or sharing a beer around a campfire at the beach, you get to see folks for who they really are. Each one different each one annoying in their own way, but, over time, most become likeable, if not downright loveable, familiars. <\/p>
Losing these connections is what Facebook has done to us. And when those are gone, so too, are the raw materials of community. Those materials help us to build the connections that we need to rely on one another when disasters or emergencies like fires earthquakes or pandemics strike us. They also just make life worth living. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thursday, for example, I was running some errands when I ran into a friend I hadn\u2019t seen for a while. He invited me to walk with him and his dog and so we did, through the forests down to the sea, checking out some new public works and finally ending up at the pub taking a glass of whiskey together. It was two hours drifting spent in the company of a neighbour talking about whatever struck our fancy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Building community is slow and inconvenient because it requires you to spend hours hanging out with people and talking about nothing in particular. That\u2019s the point. That\u2019s the feature.This is what awaits us in the other side of the decade and a half we have had of outsourcing our attention and hearts to people with malevolent interests who are working against a slow, delicious, deeply connected sense of belonging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m close to shuttering my Facebook account now. If for some reason, you wanna find me, drop me a note and we\u2019ll go for a beer.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first moved to Bowen Island back in 2001, there was a very active discussion board of Bowen Island issues called the Bowen Island Phorum. This was a typical late 1990s bulletin board type website. Locals could join and make posts and sometimes the discussions would cascade over four or five pages with replies into the hundreds on especially contentious or important issues to our little community. Although that place drove me crazy with frustration a lot of the time, and I used to issue earnest warnings about the tone of some of our debate, which, probably seemed like …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[52,48,96,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bowen","category-community","category-democracy","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/2018-05-17-15.53.42-1-1.jpg?fit=2000%2C1500&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-4nf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}