The apotheosis came with the election of Donald Trump, our first social media president, who was the living embodiment of the political made personal. Instagram influencers were the new headline-grabbing celebrities.

Social media evolved into a kind of window onto the world. This was to become one of the defining features of 21st-century life. Yet a formula had been established, one in which personal developments were treated as news, and correspondingly news was defined down into the realm of the personal. It was so invasive that, in one of the more blatant foreshadowings of the social media age, hundreds of thousands of users threatened to boycott Facebook.ДЇacebook later apologized and axed the ticker. The initial feed didnвЂ™t just show you posts it featured a kind of stock ticker that cycled through what your friends had liked, who theyвЂ™d friended, almost every action theyвЂ™d taken.

The moral panic over Instagram and girlsДЇacebook as we understand it today wasnвЂ™t really launched until 2006, when it introduced the news feed and nearly melted down the internet in the process.

Blame legacy media for spreading disinformation, not Facebook.

It was more online yearbook than seething public square. You could post photos of keg stands gone FUBAR and stalk your crushвЂ™s wall, but that was about it. The platform had only been around for about a year and only college students were allowed on. I first swaggered onto a university campus back in 2005, which made me part of that Facebook guinea pig generation. Yet spare a thought, too, for the old Facebook, which defined my young adult life more than I care to admit. So off Zuckerberg goes, into the вЂњmetaverse,вЂќ which I think is like the Upside Down if the Demogorgons were constantly taking belfies.

A good Vegas bender, in other words, though less healthful as social fabric. The reason is that those brands have become synonymous with privacy violations, self-harming video challenges, conspiracy theories, bullying, riots, insurrections. The reason that вЂњFacebookвЂќ is getting retired, per Zuck, is that he wants to вЂњtransition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.вЂќ What that means is that heвЂ™s trying to distance himself from Facebook and Instagram, the very brands he owns. How about this: Boomerware? Or in keeping with Silicon ValleyвЂ™s penchant for trendy misspellings: LyfeSuck? Or instead of a name, thereвЂ™s just the sound of Rome burning? And while we donвЂ™t yet know what the new name will be, I think I may be able to help here. Mark Zuckerberg emerged from his walk-in T-shirt closet last week to make a stunning announcement: Facebook will be changing its name.

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