Facebook Dies in March

A satirical magazine famous for running stories about aliens invading Earth and Megan Fox being secretly male published a fake interview where Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was spiraling out of control, that running it had destroyed his life, and that he was shutting the entire thing down on March 15, 2011. Everything deleted. All the photos, videos, messages—gone forever.

Thousands of people fell for it. There was actual panic. Someone quoted a student named Denise asking something like, I spend ten hours a day on Facebook. What am I supposed to do with all that free time? It’s funny in that way things are funny when they’re a little too close to the truth.

Facebook denied it casually, like they were in on the joke. We weren’t notified we’re closing, and honestly we have a lot going on right now. Perfect response. Didn’t need to defend anything.

The fear underneath the hoax was completely legitimate, though. Half a billion people had built their social lives into this platform. It’s where you kept tabs on people you’d lost touch with, where you flirted, where entire relationships happened. And the thought that it could all just vanish because a founder woke up exhausted one day? That wasn’t paranoid. Platforms die. The internet is fragile in ways we don’t like to admit, even when we’ve built our days around it.

I remember the internet before Facebook existed. Smaller networks. LiveJournal, instant messenger buddy lists, forums where you knew maybe fifty people. You weren’t constantly aware of everyone you’d ever met, weren’t comparing your life to theirs. Once Facebook arrived, I didn’t miss any of it. Nobody did. The density of connection, the constant awareness, the sheer size of it—too addictive to refuse.

But I’d let myself become dependent on something that could vanish at any moment. Not because Weekly World News said so, but because it was obviously true. And I have no idea what I’d have done with that freedom.