Everyone complaining about Facebook is complaining about the same thing- and it’s not Facebook.

A short article lately has been making the rounds in which a Dutch lass named Zilla van den Born purportedly fooled her friends and family into thinking she was more interesting than she really was via manipulating the information they received from her on Facebook— by carefully managing her physical contact with others (i.e. hiding) and posting photos of thing that seemed Asianey every so often.

It’s a clever enough project, admittedly. And while I admire her dedication to carrying it through for three whole weeks, whenever I see articles like this and others that lambast Facebook specifically for distorting reality, for affecting productivity, for making socks go missing in the wash, or any other number of personal ills, I have to shake my head in wonder.

Everybody complaining about Facebook is complaining about the same thing — and it’s not Facebook.

The real issue at hand is that Facebook is the most personal of the social networking services that we use — and that we have become conditioned to take it very personally. We attach ourselves to our Facebook profiles to the point where “de-friending” someone is on par with social homicide, when really it’s nothing more than not letting them peek at a semi-public electronic journal. Even the user interface encourages and conditions us to think this way: by calling electronic connections “Friends,” and the simplest of acknowledgements a “Like.”

It is important to remember that these are design choices. Facebook’s features are not a reflection of reality, but simply a construct created in order to train its users to develop a greater attachment to the platform.

Why is this? Simple – it’s good for business, and it’s important to remember that their business is selling you. Facebook’s true face isn’t hidden; you can check it out at http://investor.fb.com/. Facebook publicly shows who it serves — its investors, not you — and the nuts and bolts of how they do it.

When you make a Facebook profile, you have already given consent to be a product.

You have consented for your (lower-case) likes and (lower-case) dislikes to be analyzed and then used by advertisers and marketers to make upper case Money. This is in the terms of service. This is what you agreed to — the rules of the game you signed up for. The more engaged you are emotionally, the more time you spend on the site per day and more personal information you attach to your profile, the better Facebook’s value proposition to investors.

Your timeline is not Facebook. http://investor.fb.com/ is the real Facebook.

Most people forget this, because it is an inconvenient detail that makes them uncomfortable, and studies show that people will do whatever possible to make that cognitive dissonance go away — which is usually to ignore the truth that is right in front of their eyes, misattributing the symptoms for a cause.

So what is Facebook, really?

What is Facebook, then, for the user? Facebook is a medium that trades personal information packaged and sold as marketing data for a platform to share information with the world. The genius of Facebook is that the value to the user is created solely by the user themself. The connections she makes in real life, the content she chooses to see in her feed, and the types of broadcasts she makes all contribute to this value. To put this in another way:

Every user creates their own Facebook experience. Therefore, you create your own value on Facebook.

Unlike traditional media, where platform and the value are created by the gatekeepers, the content and value of Facebook is produced by you. The same principle applies for services like Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit and all of the other social media outlets once called “Web 2.0.” The better the participation, the better the content. User participation is their bread and butter.

Why does Zilla van den Born matter?

The truth is, she doesn’t. Her experiment on Facebook was clever but hardly unique. It’s become viral because it resonates with so many people’s experience of Facebook in which we hope that what we see is true and authentic, confounded by the knowledge that what we see is a constructed reality — a knowledge that we suppress because it is convenient for our preconceived mental models for what Facebook is and should be. This is the reason for the introductory section on Facebook’s investor relations, because most people are not even aware of the fact that they are the product being sold — and this is the first of many important things to realize about this service.

There is a better way.

Here’s a story for you. I have been traveling for the majority of the last four years of my life. Since I graduated from Boston College in 2010, half that time has been spent far far away from my childhood home and my collegiate stomping grounds. I traversed 18 countries, bicycled solo from the USA to Venezuela, performed and recorded music with a bevy of bands and artists ranging from burlesque stripteases in a desert music festival (complete with flaming nipple torches). I toured the US with classic reggae group The Meditations, and performed with underground blues rock shows in woodshops in San Cristóbal de las Casas where the surging crowds made the woodchips on the floor billow like a New England winter flurry.

Through much of this journey, the only way I had to keep in touch with friends and family was through Facebook. And in the beginning I was extremely awful.

In July of 2011, I set out for South America on a bicycle loaded with every material possession I would carry for the next 16 months.

It’s got all the makings of a journey of a lifetime, doesn’t it? And in fact, it was. It transformed me completely and taught me strength I never knew I had. I rode through rolling thunderstorms for days on end, I was run off the road into rock-filled ditches by military convoys, I slept in gutters and in slums and walked down streets with masked men brandishing AK-47s. I lived and imbibed with the Sinaloa cartel. I learned to speak fluent Spanish, subsequently discovering a world and a culture that opened my eyes to a warmth that familiar Boston could never have taught me. I fell in love with a woman with the bravest soul I’ve ever encountered, only to see my heart shatter when I followed my dream of reaching South America. Several times, I nearly died. I got in a wreck so bad that I thought my journey would end before I even made it halfway, only to persevere and make it through the remaining 3,000 miles. My only constant companion through three countries was a pet mouse named Neruda, and her tragic and untimely death is something I still mourn. Where one story ends, ten more begin.

But when I came back, I came back to a void. I came back to a world that did not understand the man I had become, had no idea the vastness and intensity of the experiences that I went through. While before that trip, I had known about as well as anybody the feeling of alienation that can come out of Facebook, but only after this trip did I really understand the bafflement that emotional isolation can wreak.

Facebook was my best link to the people I loved, and by using it poorly I isolated myself.

On this journey, I used Facebook like a high schooler. I posted vague and cryptic status updates tailored to balance ego and passive-aggressiveness. I posted meaningless things: superficial jokes, self-ingratiating photos. All just to say “look how cool and happy and interesting I am.”

In short, I was not honest about who I was and what I was feeling and going through. Of course Facebook felt alienating — I carefully distanced myself from my online persona by telling half-truths about myself, because what I prioritised was coddling my insecurities.

This is the position I was in, mentally and emotionally — one that was not so different from the way I see so many of my friends and acquaintances use Facebook. Nonproductively stalking people I had no intention of truly engaging with, using the platform to stoke my own ego, and generally going about Facebook with a distinct lack of focused direction or empathy.

This is the heart of the problem.

This is why Zilla van den Born’s story strikes a chord with so many. Her tale resonates with people’s own insecurities about Facebook — but the problem is not Facebook. Instead, it’s the way it’s being used. I logged onto the network to hide my own insecurities, rather than building common ground and deepening my existing connections.

In March of 2014 I left once again to travel the world. This time, I decided to treat my friends and family with a bit more respect. I decided that I would use Facebook — which would be my primary link with them while I was gone — in a way that would communicate not only the truth of where I was and what I was doing, but also the thoughts and feelings and experiences along the way. And I would do it truthfully, and make every post I made worth reading. I put more effort into my posts, so that the next time I returned there would not be the void and the alienation waiting for me.

I decided on two things: I would be honest, and I would put care and thought into what I communicated, with my audience in mind. I would make my posts worth reading.

This is a hard thing to do. People don’t like to get into real discussions on Facebook, for a variety of reasons. I have never seen a discussion thread get deep like I have on Reddit, or the Something Awful forums (where I was a regular denizen during my younger years), or on Tumblr (which I generally avoid, but respect in some ways). People are afraid to truly invest personally in Facebook — but what happens when you do?

Here is an example of a post I made while in Laos about an embarrassing incident which I then used as fodder for a funny little ditty.

Here is an example of a post which could’ve easily been summed up in a classic one-sentence status — “GREAT NIGHT DRINKING WITH MY BROSKIS ET. AL.” — but which I took just a bit more time and care with.

The photo samples in this article, originally posted on Facebook, were also meticulously selected and edited. I wrote lengthy and well-researched descriptions of what I was shooting for those who might take an interest. I would post the best one out of every hundred photos I shot, and write a short report on each one, in a documentarian style. Some sparked conversation. Others sparked wonder. All sparked something.

So what happened?

People responded. They responded in a huge way — because instead of treating Facebook as a platform for exclusion (which was a consequence of my ego), I used it as a platform for inclusion. I wrote engaging, immersive stories and posted engaging, immersive photographs. My friends old and new, casual acquaintances, and travelers I met along the way — they could all join in on the journey.

One by one, the messages started coming in from people whose wanderlust was stoked and encouraged by my posts. People who were inspired by the images and experiences started messaging me for advice on getting away from their day-to-day lives. People messaged me to tell me they were planning on, were thinking about, or had just quit their jobs. I bear a deep pride in the fact that the stories and energy that I put out into the world through the internet and in meatspace chats struck such a deep impression that several people (five, in fact) quit their jobs to travel or otherwise pursue their dreams. I can’t take the credit for changing their lives — they already had the heart and the drive, and my role in their life is small compared — but I can take credit for inspiring them in some small way.

When did you last inspire someone?

Slowly, I divested myself of the ego, self-consciousness, and insecurity which formerly pervaded everything I did online. I became more honest, more self-aware, and a better friend — because I also started looking at other people’s profiles with the concept of finding ways to build common ground and deepen connections. Facebook has made dear friends of former acquaintances. Facebook has found me business partners and help when I needed it. Facebook has done a lot — or has it? As we realised, the responsibility for value of Facebook is solely in one’s own hands.

Nowadays, this personal investment in Facebook is paying off in other ways.

Forty-two days ago, I founded a nonprofit startup called The Bamboo School. The Bamboo School is a free school for the world’s poorest children. The initial investment came from the money I had saved for travel (I started this school with four months’ travel budget left) and I posted updates of the rapid progress the school made as more people joined the movement and we established first one site in Phong Nha, and another in Sa Pa. In a month, we grew from serving zero to nearly sixty students. We went through a shocking degree of adversity at the outset, and came through it stronger. And through all of it, people all over the world were along for the ride. They felt our hope, our drive, our passion, our fear, our relentless optimism.

They saw the sweat and blood I shed for this school, the lengths I went to for this dream I held. For my first school site, to gain the trust of the locals and to make sure I could trust them in return, I did a radical thing — I worked beside them. Our first school site is in a scrapyard, and I have moved literally hundreds of pounds of trash and scrap metal alongside the people of this town so that they can see the kind of person I am.

I dined with dignitaries, faced dire threats of violence, and through it all my family and friends were with me through that journey. Everyone I knew saw the truth and the passion behind everything we were doing.

One day, we got a big opportunity. We partnered with a school serving the children of the Hmong community in the northernmost reaches of Vietnam, a community that has for centuries been among the poorest in the world. This school expanded our student load from ten to sixty, and we needed help to expand. I put out a call for help on Facebook, the only social networking platform I really use.

Within twenty-four hours of our first donation drive, with one post on Facebook, we received nearly $600.

This was not an aberration. This came from the connections which I had been diligently building by then for months and months. These connections were made possible by the fact that I was open, forthright, and honest with the people in my life.

This $600 went a long way. I promised everyone that the money would be put to good use, and we established partnerships with the biggest and best stores in Hanoi to make that money go even farther. We built relationships with the best music stores and suppliers and other institutions in Hanoi. Which meant that a mere fraction of that donation money was able to procure us all of the instruments pictured above, generously provided by Trần Thắng, perhaps Vietnam’s most eminent guitarist.

Two days after posting that picture, I posted a photo of our classroom. It’s not much: just a collection of neighborhood kids and adults playing music in the street, but it is an education. I did this so that the people who have invested in me can have proof that their contributions are being put to good use. Not only so that I can continue to include people in my life, but now it serves a secondary purpose — that of accountability and transparency. Now, the feedback I get on this platform provides me a push when I am tired, motivates me to be even more diligent and responsible, and makes me better and more effective.

With enough instruments, now I was able to put on a concert for the local community (complete with comically large speakers) and hire a music teacher to work with the children twice a week. The momentum from that show allowed me to secure a facility to make these instruments available to the kids every day after they get let out of school. On top of that, our new schoolmaster is in charge of $300 of books we brought with us, which are the seeds of the first free library in the town of Phong Nha. The books range from music books (which we have taught the children to teach themselves out of) to magic books (studying detailed directions to reproduce a trick is a terrific exercise in reading comprehension) to illustrated books on nature, history, art, and science (accompanied by Winnie the Pooh), to comic books for both girls and boys (to encourage a love of reading).

With a more dynamic group lesson setting, now that kids did not have to sit around and wait for an instrument to use, we were able to teach the kids to teach themselves when the teacher was not present. Then, we taught them to teach each other, because this teaches them the true joy of learning — to share it. To support others with what you’ve gained. To the extent that we could on an infinitesimal budget we created the best learning environment possible, one that has what I wish I could have had myself growing up.

At this point, on day 43 after starting the Bamboo School project, I could declare that I had my first school. It was the proudest moment of my life, to see this baby come out of its gestation and emerge fully formed. And yet, so much work must be done to make sure it survives infancy. So, I woke up at 5am today in order to canvass Central Vietnam for teachers, to find new suppliers, to garner new support. One mountain has been crossed, but having broken through the clouds I find another, and another. I don’t know how I’ll cross this range, but I do know that the place I want to be is over there.

So where will this go? Truth be told, I have not the foggiest. I just know where it’s led me. And even though I can’t foretell how this journey ends, I wouldn’t want to know even if I could.