I try to be honest here, and in that vein, let me say that I don’t really understand about 90 percent of things that happen on the internet. I can confidently shop, I can email and text, I use Messenger, and I browse social media daily. I can use our online banking and bill pay platforms and can figure out (most) of the streaming services we use.

I’ve also got the necessary accounts for governmental operations - you know, DMV, Social Security for my husband, our health insurance, etc. - and can do what I need to. (That said – if I have mastered 10 percent of the internet, my husband has mastered about .005 percent, so I do all of our ‘official’ things. He has locked us out of our bank accounts online one time too many!)

But back to that social media. I ‘found’ Tik Tok about a year ago and do kind of enjoy it. I’ve become vested in the lives of some internet-famous rescue dogs; I find myself oddly sucked into watching videos about what people buy at the grocery store; when I was growing out my gray hair other people showing off their grow-out progress kept me going; and I like the content that the various levels of sports teams posts.

Recently though, I’ve noticed that TikTok has figured out some other things that I am also interested in – I guess that’s the ‘algorithm”. (Definition: A set of rules and signals used by platforms to sort, rank, and recommend content to users instead of showing posts in simple time order.)

I’ve started pondering retirement in a few years and, somehow, I’m now seeing videos on what people do all day in retirement, how they stretch their money in retirement, and how to keep their husbands from driving them crazy in retirement (!!). Then, the other day, I happened to watch a video of a baby cow being born. Now I see so much farm animal content. I didn’t mind too much until the day the video was about a family chicken farm that was going to have chicken for dinner that night. You can probably guess what they showed. Now I scroll right on past all farm creatures and their owners.

I like Instagram, hate LinkedIn (I just can’t see the purpose and don’t have time to ‘manage’ another page), and never use Twitter (X) unless I’m trying to learn about a breaking-news story or sports score update.

And then there’s Facebook. I’ve been a Facebook user since 2009 apparently. I loved it when my kids were in high school and college – I could simultaneously spy on them and post about their accomplishments. I love it to share and promote community events. It’s also fairly good for breaking news and sports scores.

But what I hate, is how Facebook and its algorithms are now showing me so darn many local – and regional – political and community sites. I try to keep an eye on the local sites, just to get a feel for what’s going on. But, I don’t get too vested in them though – with no need for vetted or verified content, it’s hard to put much credence in what I read. And honestly, I often can’t even keep track of who supports who/what or what the site’s name is referring to.

Facebook and all the other sites – if you’re reading this, please return my feed to family photos, dogs, legit community groups and activities, birthdays and anniversaries, and good news. Please and thank you. (Oh, and no farm animal content!)