6th
In praise of castration.
It’s not that I won’t miss Favrd. Discovering Favrd stimulated important synapses that needed to be stimulated, enriched my Twitter experience, and introduced me to new friends - from a pool of talented, thoughtful, intelligent people I previously had no idea existed. How could I be anything but grateful to Dean for having built the thing around which that great stuff happened?
But I’m also unequivocally and unapologetically glad that Dean took it down. Wind up your stone throwing arms if you want, but I think it was a ballsy act of tough love on his part, and, frankly, I’m as thankful for Favrd’s retirement as I was for its existence. I mean that, and I want to share why.
Back in March, I made a choice to stop checking Favrd on a regular basis. I didn’t like what the attachment had done for me, and I wanted to weaken it. So I stopped looking at Favrd. At least I stopped looking very often. Specifically, I went from checking the thing many times a day to checking it once every few days. When I checked it, I limited myself to looking at the leaderboard. I made a specific pact with myself to go as long as I could without looking at my own Favrd page. And for as long as I upheld that pact, I was unselfconscious in a way I hadn’t been for months prior. It was intoxicating. But guess how long it lasted. You can guess in weeks, and you can go ahead and count on one hand.
See, the thing is, I crave validation just like everyone else. But the kind of self-consciounsness that arises from the drive for routine acceptance is generally a muzzle on creativity, and seeking constant validation is masochistic. Yet, resisting the urge to seek it, when such a powerful means of attainment is just a dick joke and 15 minutes away, takes a lot of energy. Therein - if you’ll forgive me one commemorative pun - lies the rub: Creativity was squelched, and the collective will to resist its killing was overrun by the thirst for leaderboard wins.
The quality decline on Favrd was as obvious as it was inevitable. Dean did the adult thing by shutting it down. He honored his values, and that’s more than a lot of us can say for the dehumanizing garbage we’ve grown accustomed to throwing at our friends and followers for a couple of stars. It’s damned admirable, what Dean did. And I hope that, in time, more of us will thank him.
I like his parting advice best:
Just an idea: next time you see something you like, write the person who made it a note telling them so. Even better, explain why.
It’s a call to better versions of ourselves. I’m into that. It’s advice I can grow with. And with which I can grow closer to you guys, among whom are some of the smartest, most decent, most creative people I have the good fortune to know.
