Losing Facebook: A Journey of Letting go, reflection and Reconnection

In December last year, when I opened my Facebook account to indulge in a bit of mindless scrolling, a message popped up from the administrators: apparently I had breached the ‘code of conduct’ and needed to provide a reason if my account was to continue. It looked legitimate. I panicked, clicked the link (I know, I know…), answered the questions and—just like that—my account was gone. When I realized what I’d done, I scrambled to recover it, but the hackers had installed two-factor authentication, trapping me in an endless loop. After months of frustration, I decided to emotionally step away.

When I returned, refreshed and energized from my travels, I thought that maybe I should to set up a new account. However, my email address triggered the same two-factor authentication roadblock. So, I tried again, making two small tweaks—a different gender and birthdate—to slip past the machine. For a short time, it worked. Then this morning, I clicked on a message from Facebook and—once again—my account was disabled. The algorithm decided I was a phony.

The irony isn’t lost on me. The faceless entity that failed to protect my original identity was swift in shutting down the only way I had left to reconnect. And so, I was coming to terms with the reality: I had to let it go.

The Illusion of Permanence

For over a decade, Facebook was a space where I quietly built a digital home. It held my friendships, my artistic journey, and a collection of pages and communities that aligned with my interests. While I can nobly declare that it was a place of connection and reflection, if I’m honest, it was also a habit, and when it was gone the withdrawal symptoms felt like grief. As I sat with my feelings of loss, anger, denial, something else began to surface—a recognition that perhaps this was a necessary change.

Social media gives us the illusion of permanence. We build profiles, accumulate content, nurture connections, and assume they will always be there. But as with so many things in our digital and physical world, nothing is truly stable. Facebook, like the larger systems of late capitalism, operates with a fragile and extractive logic—it exists to keep us engaged, to shape our interactions, to sell our attention. But it does not belong to us. And now, neither do the spaces we build within it.

It is fitting, in a way, that I have been thinking so much about collapse—about how systems, institutions, and ways of life unravel. The loss of my Facebook account is not on the scale of global environmental and societal crises, but it exists within the same landscape of impermanence. This experience has forced me to ask: What do I truly need to stay connected? What spaces are worth investing in? How do I want to engage with the world moving forward?

Art Without Algorithms

As an artist, Facebook was a place where I shared my work, found opportunities, and stayed visible. Losing that space could feel like erasure—but I can choose to see it differently. Instead of relying on a platform that dictates what is seen and by whom, perhaps the aim is to build something more intentional, more direct, and less dependent on an external force that can disappear overnight.

This moment has prompted me to rethink how I share my work and ideas, and how I spend my time. What does it mean to be an artist without a Facebook presence? If I am not on Facebook, do I, can I exist as an artist? And what does it mean to be me without the distraction? Perhaps it means bucking a trend in a good way. Perhaps it means refusing to participate in a system that reduces art to content, presence to engagement metrics.

I know I am not alone in feeling that the world is shifting quickly—that the old ways of being, working, and connecting are unraveling. I have been exploring this through my art, and now I find myself living it directly. Maybe that’s the lesson: to let go, to adapt, to create new ways of being without clinging to what is already dissolving.

An Unexpected Turn

And then, just as I was coming to terms with leaving Facebook behind, the unexpected happened—Facebook let me back in. No explanation, no real acknowledgment of what had happened, just an open door to return. After all that, do I even want to?

Perhaps that’s the real question: What is worth returning to, and what is better left behind? Instead of picking up where I left off, I’ve decided to approach Facebook differently—curating my time there, limiting engagement, using it as a tool rather than a habit. Maybe that is the middle path: neither clinging to it nor abandoning it entirely, but choosing to be more intentional.

Rethinking Connection

So where does that leave me? And where does that leave us—those who have followed me, who are dear to me, who have engaged with my work, and who have connected through a shared history, shared ideas, ideals and visions?

Rather than rebuilding within the same system, perhaps it’s time to embrace a slower, more meaningful exchange. If we step away from the endless scrolling dictated by external algorithms—those systems that shape our attention more than we realize—what new possibilities open up?

This shift invites me to share on my own terms, to engage more directly, and to explore new ways of connecting beyond the constraints of a platform designed to keep us endlessly engaged rather than deeply connected.

Authentic connection—rather than passive consumption—feels more vital than ever. If we were connected on my old Facebook page—whether as friends or as someone who followed my work—I would love to stay connected, but perhaps in a way that feels more intentional, more real.

This is not just about Facebook. It’s about rethinking how we show up in the world, how we build and sustain relationships, and how we create art and meaning in times of change.

Perhaps this is not a loss, but an evolution into a different consciousness.

Let’s see where it leads.

*Image: A Forest is a Dream, Bronwyn Berman 2025. Burning tool with pen and Ink on 650gsm unpressed paper.

Rethinking Art in the time of Collapse

2 Mar, 2024.

I have just returned from three weeks in Vietnam. More than ten years ago, after learning that air travel accounts for over 2.5% of global emissions I decided to fly only if absolutely necessary. But my partner wanted to go. His brother had lived in Vietnam for twenty-five years before passing away last year, and he wanted to make a pilgrimage—to see where his brother had lived, to understand why he stayed so long. Despite my misgivings, it felt like a valid reason. So we went.

We’re home now and friends are asking me, “How was it?” In so many ways, it was great. The people are kind and welcoming. The food is inexpensive, delicious, and healthy, we had the break from life that we needed to reset. But as always, the real takeaways from travel are found between the lines—in what lingers after one returns home.

Vietnam: A Country in Crisis

I’m not here to criticise Vietnam—it’s a country with so much to offer but my overwhelming sense of Vietnam is that it is a land whose health is in decline. The rivers are choked with plastic and polystyrene. The air is so thick with pollution that many people have persistent coughs. A surreal example of late-stage capitalism: the resort where we stayed for part of our trip was an oasis of luxury, but it is surrounded by eighteen abandoned mega-resorts and twenty hectares of razed beachfront—development frozen mid-construction. And yet, this same region has the highest homelessness rate in Vietnam.

But the thing that hit me hardest? There were no birds.

At first, I noticed their absence at the beach—there were no seagulls. Then I realized that apart from a few lonely sparrows, I hadn’t seen birds anywhere. It felt like a silent warning—like the canary in the coal mine, but on a national scale.

Loss at the Edge of the World

The most moving part of our trip was in Sapa, a mountain town in northern Vietnam. We stayed in a traditional eco-lodge, and a local guide took us down into the valley, through a collection of hill-tribe villages.

She told us how quickly things were changing, with tourism developments mushrooming and visitors choking services. How, last September, the heaviest rains the elders had ever seen caused multiple landslides and many deaths. “I know that change is good,” she said wistfully, “but it’s happening so fast.”

And then she told me about the bats.

We had just been invited into a traditional home—three simple rooms on a concrete slab, with a central fire. It was dark inside. The mother of the house squatted on the damp floor skeining strands of hemp for weaving. Our guide told me about her own childhood in a house just like this, but higher up in the mountains. At night, when they lit the fire for warmth and an oil lamp for light, little bats would fly in, settling on the rafters. “We loved them,” she laughed. “They were so funny.”

Then her face changed.

“But they don’t come anymore. I think they don’t like us anymore. Maybe they will change their minds and come back.”

I don’t know why, but of all the climate-related tragedies I’ve read about, this one brought the dire situation we are facing into visceral reality. I wanted to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t.

What is the Role of the Artist Now?

Returning to my studio gallery, the way I’ve been making art for the past couple of years feels meaningless. One of the key findings from my Ph.D. study where I looked at the ecovillage movement as an art movement, was that art making in ecovillages isn’t about fame or fortune—it’s about integrating creativity into everyday life. There’s no emphasis on quality or success—only on participation. It’s not about what you do, but that you do it.

Yet, when I finished my study, instead of exploring how these ideas can translate into the mainstream, I jumped headfirst back into the capital ‘A’ Art world. Making work for sale, entering prizes, looking for commercial gallery representation, then opening my own gallery, and wrestling with the exhausting necessity of social media. And while there have definitely been successes, the relentless cycle of rejections from prize committees and commercial galleries has left me feeling drained.

Vietnam forced me to rethink how I should proceed as an artist. If the air is fouled and the rivers choked, if there are no birds, and the bats aren’t coming back and if, according to all of the scholarship I read during my research, the reality is that there is no area in which the situation is improving, what is the point? What is the point of putting myself up for prizes, jostling with the myriad of other voices for a place in the collectors market or making commericially focused work for an increasingly overcrowded market? As serendipity would have it, a friend sent me a link to the work of Dr. Jem Bendell, a professor from Glasgow University. His thesis? We are no longer in a position to mitigate social and environmental collapse—we are living through the early stages of it.

So I find myself asking: What is the role of the artist in a time of collapse? What is it that art can do?

Where to From Here?

To be honest with you, I don’t really know. Of course I will chase up opportunities that will provide me with income but I can feel myself pivoting into a new way of working. I am committed to communicating my thoughts via this blog, where I will explore the possibilities of how to work as an artist in this time of endings, to discover what, if any, are the new beginnings. Maybe artists are valuable in reshaping reality, helping communities to imagine and embody new ways of living. Maybe it’s about creating spaces for people to process grief and/or despair. Maybe art is a tool for experimenting with new forms of community, such as the ecovillage communties that I studied. Maybe a book needs to be written, or maybe this blog will do what needs to be done. Or maybe it’s a matter of dreaming into new myths, stories and rituals that may help us foster connection and meaning in a fragmenting world. Whatever shape it forms, I invite you to come along for the ride. Because I know now, there is no turning back.

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