Used properly, Facebook — all social media, really — is a great way to keep in touch with family and friends who you may not get to see very often. You know, like this:

“Hi Mom, check out this photo of Billy taking his first step!”

“Congratulations on your wedding anniversary!”

“Are you going home for Thanksgiving? Maybe we can all get together for some drinks!”

Used conventionally, Facebook — all social media, really — is a great way to stalk the object of your affection, broadcast your ill-informed opinions and blurry photos to anyone willing to pay attention, engage in arguments with people you went to high school with (or complete strangers) and otherwise wouldn’t give a shit about, and spread bizarre, semi-morbid stories fed by websites as click-bait to maximize the thin profitability of low-paying banner ads. Human nature influences Facebook’s content; Facebook, in turn, provides the inertia that propels this perpetual motion machine of narcissism and sensational journalism.

But something occurs to me every day: Maybe I should appreciate that Facebook and the media that siphons its information via Facebook keeps me updated, in real time, to the brutal realities that exist in our world. Surely, the world has always been an awful place — but now, more so than ever before, we have to acknowledge it constantly as it pours in from all corners of the globe…all while we sit in a desk chair, impotent and unable to do anything about it.

It’s a pretty awful feeling. Honestly, if I didn’t have the occasional tearjerker Upworthy post showing up every now and then, I’d have to abandon all hope in humanity.

I work from home, and Facebook is a constant presence; a mindless diversion at-the-ready that sits open, all day long, on my desktop. So this is what my life has become: Less than five minutes of scrolling this afternoon, November 11, 2013, provided me with the following headlines. Every day is like this.

Your Vagina Isn’t Just Too Big, Too Floppy, and Too Hairy—It’s Also Too Brown (source)

Artist nails his own testicles to the ground in front of horrified tourists (source)

Rock Band Massacred During Horrific Murder-Suicide in Brooklyn, New York (source)

Brutal: Inside the world of child cage fighting (source)

40 Armed Gun Advocates Intimidate Mothers Against Gun Violence In A Restaurant Parking Lot (source)

The world’s oddest jobs – from armpit sniffers to dog-food tasters (source)

Six Televangelists Under Investigations; Living High on Hog, 10.5 Million Dollar Mansions, Lear Jets, Rolls-Royces, From Donated Moneys (source)

Woman Was So Drunk She Tried Wearing a Cheeseburger as a Shoe After Caught Having Sex in Public (source)

Stolen dog believed to have been gang raped (source)

Girl throwing puppies in river on video in Bosnia won’t face charge (source)

U.S. Veterans Face Staggering Epidemic of Unemployment, Trauma & Suicide (source)

Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’ to become Broadway musical (source)