That Time I Almost Lost My Facebook Account
And learned I may have a bit of a social media addiction
I’m a man of routines.
Every morning I get up at 7 AM and I feed my cat before feeding myself. Before I ride my stationary bike for ten miles and shower, I eat breakfast - a bowl of cereal or oatmeal or sometimes an egg sandwich that I make through sleep-dusted eyes - while I check my websites: Twitter (err, X), Facebook, Email, WhatsApp, Deadline, Bleeding Cool, etc.
I like my routines. They help ground my day and keep me feeling productive as I mark things off my “To Do List.” When my routines are interrupted I find myself askew. Case in point: On Tuesday, I discovered I had been logged out of Facebook overnight. No big deal - I would log back in. Of course, I’d need to open up my Facebook app and go to the Code Generator because I had a Two-Factor Authentification set up. Can’t be too careful with social media, right? But wait? Where had Facebook’s Code Generator gone? I searched the settings toolbar and it wasn’t there.
As I struggled to figure out where the Code Generator had gone from my Facebook app, I made a fatal mistake and accidentally logged out of the app. Now I was trapped outside of Facebook from both my desktop and my phone. Oops. At least I had my iPad, right? It took me exactly five minutes to also accidentally log out of the Facebook app on my iPad as well. Now, with no way to access the Code Generator and zero browsers still connected to the site, I was thoroughly screwed - locked out of my account with no way to log back in.
I sat in front of my computer for over ninety minutes - my morning bike ride forgotten - as I tried to figure out a solution to my problem. I read blog posts (apparently Facebook had announced they were getting rid of their internal Code Generator - announcements I had somehow missed). Other folks had posted on Reddit about their similar predicaments - and no solution seemed in sight. Without a six-digit code from a Two-Factor Authenticator, you could not log into Facebook, let alone turn off the Two-Factor Authenticator or make any changes to it (such as setting it up on a third-party app or switching it to an SMS function).
The only option seemingly available was to click a link titled “Need help?” on your phone that would allow you to upload an ID that Facebook could use to verify your identity. According to the site, the process would take 24 hours. Big deal. I could wait a day to use my Facebook account, right?
Oh, shit. I forgot about my addictive personality.
I spent the majority of the day checking my email - waiting not-so-patiently for a sign that Facebook had verified my identity. I uploaded different IDs, thinking that maybe the recent Facebook pictures I had posted didn’t look that much like my Driver’s Licence or Passport. Twenty-four hours came and went and I had had zero word from Facebook so I continued to send pictures of my ID. Forty-eight hours. Seventy-two hours. Things were not looking good.
Facebook has no public customer service. There is no email address or phone number listed on their website. I did find a phone number through Googling but all I got when I called was a voicemail letting me know that most answers to customer questions could be found on their help page. Not my questions, though. There was no clear instruction on how to escape the trap I had unwittingly laid for myself. As I read more and more Reddit posts or X threads in which others detailed their similar problems, it started to seem more and more likely that I would never access my Facebook account again.
I first got my Facebook account in 2004. It was the spring semester of my Freshman year of college. The Facebook (as it was known back then) was spreading from campus to campus and, as an awkward nineteen-year-old unsure of how to make new friends I dove headfirst into the website. My use of Facebook has fluctuated over the years. A year or so after first signing up for the site, I had all but turned my back on it in favor of MySpace (Facebook was cool, I guess, but it didn’t let you rank your friends or link songs to your profile). After MySpace died, I came crawling back to Facebook with my tail between my legs just in time for the site to open up its doors to the wider public (no longer did you need an .edu email address to sign up for an account).
I added as many of my college friends as I could find and then started adding people I barely knew in college - classmates I had maybe said a dozen words to all semester. I followed that up with a deep dive through my high school yearbook, followed by middle school and then elementary school. Facebook was like a nostalgia express - sending me barreling down memory lane in search of a connection regardless of how tenuous it might be to the past.
I spent most of 2008 through 2012 posting on Facebook. A lot. There were some days when I probably made a dozen posts in a single evening. A lot of people I knew from high school unfriended me - sending me into a self-righteous stupor of indignation that led to me unfriending a lot of other people. Reject them before they can reject me. I was like a chimp with a gun.
In the last decade, I’ve mellowed out on my Facebook use - using the app mostly for promotional purposes. I use it to promote events at the Alamo Drafthouse or stuff I’ve written. Truthfully, though, Facebook is mostly a source for that occasionally needed endorphin rush I know how to get when I post a picture of me doing something exciting or happy and I get a rush of likes. That’s the drug I’m completely and utterly addicted to.
The thought of losing my Facebook account and either moving on from the platform or starting over again leaves me stressed out. I don’t want to build an online life from scratch but the thought of not having a social media platform seems so alien and unfathomable that I can barely consider it as a real possibility.
Facebook has changed the way my brain is wired, for better or worse. Probably worse. I’m addicted to the site and there’s likely no giving it up. Hell, I haven’t even given up Twitter even as it slowly circles the drain of relevance.
On Friday night, I finally came up with a solution for my Facebook problem. I paid the $15 a month required to become Meta Verified via my Instagram app. This allowed me to access heightened customer service, which meant that I spent several hours on Saturday morning chatting with “Tim” from Meta as he tried to unlock my Facebook account.
We still haven’t completely solved the problem - I have access to Facebook but not access to my Two-Factor Authenticator. The moment I’m logged out of Facebook again, I’m back to square one. I feel like I’m operating on borrowed time. Maybe I should be using this time to create a new Facebook profile, or at least download all the data from my current Facebook profile. I’m living on the edge of danger - the first-world kind of danger that means I might have to go another 72 hours without seeing who liked my post about a movie playing at the Alamo Drafthouse this weekend.
Maybe this is my way of proving to myself that I’m not a lost cause. It’s like playing Russian Roulette - I’m putting everything on the line to provide evidence that, if push came to shove, I could live without Facebook. Who am I kidding? I could sooner live without Facebook than I could live without a nose.
Mark Zuckerberg has me in his clutches and that pasty-ass weirdo ain’t ever letting go.
Last week, while taking a break from my war to get back on Facebook, I watched ROCK ODYSSEY, a 1987 Hanna-Barbera movie that was meant to teach kids about the history of rock music before being scrapped for wild imagery. As you might expect, this movie ruled.
An immortal shape-shifting alien goddess tries to find love but keeps falling for greasers, hippies and whale rights activists that have a bad habit of dying. There are demons, acid trips, human sacrifices, a cameo from Satan and sound-alike Beatles songs. You know, for kids.
This movie is so amazingly weird. I have zero idea who the audience is, besides me of course. It’s as if AMERICAN POP, HEAVY METAL, FANTASIA and that Pearl Jam music video Todd McFarlane directed all had a baby together. And that baby had faux Burt Reynolds in it.
Anyway, ROCK ODYSSEY - track it down. It was once thought lost but somebody for some reason aired it on Boomerang in Asia and now, thankfully, it’s been uploaded to the Internet Archive. Long live rock and roll, baby.
As far as newer films go, LANDSCAPE WITH INVISIBLE HAND opens in theaters this weekend. I really dug this film by Cory Finley (THOROUGHBREDS, BAD EDUCATION). It’s a little long-winded and sometimes loses sight of its overall themes, but I loved its messy ambition. It’s a weird movie with a pronounced point-of-view and has aliens that look like raw naked turkeys. And, to be honest, we just don’t get many of those kind of movies nowadays. Where is the raw naked turkey representation?
The film stars Asante Blackk as a high school student who is recruited into a money-making scheme by his crush (Kylie Rogers). Earth, it seems, has been colonized by extraterrestrials. These aliens are technologically advanced in every way, but they don’t know what it feels like to experience love. As such, they’re addicted to the concept. They will pay humans to live stream courtship and romance. Unfortunately, when the alien overlords discover that Blackk and Rogers’ characters are faking their high school romance, they demand retribution. Nobody likes to learn their reality television programming is scripted.
LANDSCAPE WITH INVISIBLE HAND is a fun, weird movie and I’ll always stand on a crate to shout out the praises of films like it. See it!
Quick WHERE WOLF updates:
I’ll be manning a booth at the end of the month for an Author Indie Book Fair at Spring Street Studios. I'll be selling copies of WHERE WOLF alongside some of the coolest local writers my city has to offer. Admission is free and there will be a food truck. See you there!
I’ve been listed on Bedrock City Con’s guest page. I look all official and everything. This event isn’t until October, but grab your badge because it should be a lot of fun. I, for one, am excited to get my copies of BONE and STRAY DOGS signed.
And finally, I shared a sneak preview last week on my social media (!!!) of the in-production THE CURSE OF THE WHERE WOLF.
In addition to just being a great book (probably my favorite werewolf book of all time), I felt a strong need to pay tribute to Stephen Graham Jones’ MONGRELS because of the incredibly kind pull quote he provided for WHERE WOLF last year.
Just a reminder that WHERE WOLF is available to buy at cool bookstores such as Brazos Bookstore and Whose Books, as well as all major online retailers. If you’ve read the book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. It helps. A lot.
Beware the moon!