Every day, when I open Facebook or Instagram, I’m bombarded by reels of muscular, shirtless men thrusting their pelvises and shaking their asses. I relentlessly click “see less like this,” blocking the most obnoxious accounts—like a man promoting his OnlyFans account by making out with a half dozen twinks one by one. 

The thing is, I just don’t care about any of this. The low-grade sexualization grates on me with its vacuity, with the suggestion that the pinnacle of existence as a gay man is to be in your 20s, shaking your toned ass to Lady Gaga or Charli xcx for the world to see. 

Is that what your liberation looks like? Because it’s not mine.

I appreciate that I’ve aged out of this world, and that’s fine with me. I don’t care what people post on social media, or what they like to see. But where’s the opt-out button? Because apparently the “see less like this” buttons aren’t working. 

And by the way, it’s not just the slow-burn sexualization. It’s the reinforcement of racist ideals in the gay community. The content algorithms almost unfailingly feature white men—easily more than 90 percent of the time. Not only are we meant to have tight abs, iron biceps, and juicy asses, we’re all meant to be blond and blue-eyed, too. 

Maybe what frightens me the most is the way that we accept what we’re given, the way I accept when I’m given—despite its clear and consistent degradation. Despite ostensibly being created to connect users with one another across the world, the success of platforms like Facebook and Instagram isn’t about the user experience. It’s about revenue. It isn’t about the quality of the experience, it’s about the duration of the experience and the number of clicks and views. If I’m spending more time on Facebook reporting videos and ads I don’t want to see, I’m still keeping up my end of the bargain. An unhappy user is still an engaged user.

And the thing is, we’re stuck. If we opt-out, we fall off people’s radars. We cease to exist. I suspended my Facebook account for nearly five years; believe me, I know. 

I want to stay in touch with people. I want to see your photos, I want to see your kids, I want your life updates. But I don’t want to be on Facebook. I’m not going anywhere. At least, not just yet. 

Please, if you have an account on BlueSky, give me a follow. It’s a much better platform. You can find me @meredithaprobert. 

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