We Really Did Do This To Ourselves: Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

I really loved the show, “Succession.” Still do. Such iconic characters that could be ruthless, inept, and ruthlessly inept. It was also fiction. I mean, yeah, you kinda knew in the recesses of your brain it wasn’t too fictional, but the moral depravity was so far outside what could possibly be real that it was easy to roll with it.

Then I read Sarah Wynn-Williams’ “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism.” And this book, my friends, with no disrespect to the author because I think this is the intention, is a whole bunch of ick.

I’d be an absolute hypocrite to pretend I think social media is the devil’s playground. I love and will continue to doomscroll on the daily. I have, to some degree, stayed away from Facebook and shared significantly less in recent years because I do believe in the lost art of privacy, but it’s been a wonderful tool with which to keep up with old friendships and stay connected.

Still, after reading Wynn-Williams’ account of her time at Facebook, starting with the laudable goal of establishing a policy framework by which the platform could operate ethically as it grew outside the United States and ending with her summarily dismissed after making a sexual harrassment complaint, readers are left with, “Really? Can we not just have one nice thing anymore that isn’t grounded in moral bankruptcy?”

You do have to take the book with a tiny bit of salt — this is one person’s account, obviously the company has said publicly that it’s all BS, yada yada yada. It’s just always so disappointing when you read that even those who famously put themselves out there as champions of women can actually be just as awful as the men they work with. Maybe worse.

Anyone who’s followed politics and social media these last 10 years will have a basic understanding of what’s going on with any platform — I am certain Facebook is not the only one playing fast and loose with the truth, so there’s nothing mind-blowingly revelatory here. What readers do get is a front row seat to the ascension of the platform as a power broker and what that does, allegedly, to the people running it.

It was a nice non-fiction break but now I need to escape reality for a little while. Back to my stack ‘o novels. And doomscrolling with a very skeptical eye, as always.