A terrible accident today in Hoboken has reminded me of the Facebook “check in” feature. Facebook rightfully earns a lot of criticism for the way it runs its business but there’s no denying its usefulness to people like me – half traveller, half shut in – who have friends and family cast to all corners of the earth but can now keep up with their daily lives as if there wasn’t an ocean or a continent between us. Today, my only New Jerseyite friend checked in as safe, and this reminded me of the night of the Paris attacks, when I was refreshing the page over and over again until all of my friends had that green checkmark next to their name. For all the shit Facebook sends us, it’s still worth its weight in gold to me.
