вЂњFacebook? Which Sex and the City character are you Facebook? Repository of vacation photos Facebook? The place that made вЂњpokingвЂќ your friend an option and вЂњItвЂ™s ComplicatedвЂќ a relationship status? This is whatвЂ™s radicalizing the world?вЂќ Desperate to reassure myself that ours is not the only stupid time in history, IвЂ™ve been revisiting the history of the Church of England. IвЂ™ve read all this before, of course, but IвЂ™ve found it hard to really take the measure of it without succumbing to its absurdity. The revelations in the Facebook Papers are insulting even to our divisions, which I have formerly preferred to think of as principled-or philosophical, or at least rooted in something other than dopamine hits from вЂњsharesвЂќ and вЂњlikes.вЂќ But reporting on Facebook confirms the extent to which Facebook doesnвЂ™t just reflect our polarization-it drives it. One of the many things it proves is the extent to which Facebook shapes not just lives but deaths. This last is so monstrously stupid as a damning revelation that I almost canвЂ™t bear it: What forces brought us to a place where this counts as major news and must, because the effects of the angry emoji are humiliatingly undeniable? A few weeks ago, I spent some time looking at the Herman Cain Awards-a subreddit dedicated to documenting anti-vaxxersвЂ™ COVID cases as told through their Facebook posts. That our feelings and convictions are this easy to manipulate, that the shape of our day can be affected by a choice as vapid as someone deciding to weight the вЂњangryвЂќ emoji five times more than the others because it maximizes engagement. How flattening, how insulting to whatever we humans hubristically imagine ourselves to be, that weвЂ™re all so obviously vulnerable to these algorithms. WhatвЂ™s hitting me just now is the grim story all this tells about the вЂњhuman spiritвЂќ or whatever.

ThatвЂ™s all bad, and the geopolitical implications of a corporation that started off ranking girlsвЂ™ hotness and is now capable of swaying elections in multiple countries are dire. ItвЂ™s not even the barrage of recent revelations about exactly how much Facebook itself knew about its destructive effects, or how determinedly it incentivized divisive content anyway. Not the idiotic rebrand (as blatant an effort to interrupt bad publicity as IвЂ™ve had the pleasure of observing) and not the site itself, which I donвЂ™t use anymore (Twitter does a good enough job making me unhappy). The feeling has come slowly, IвЂ™m sorry to say-I wish IвЂ™d been quicker on the uptake-but now itвЂ™s here and itвЂ™s overwhelming: I am depressed about Facebook. Lili Loofbourow has seen the future and itвЂ™s Facebook:

Which balto character are you