The other day, the occasionally adorable elderly cat that is Facebook coughed up something from the distant past.

My husband forwarded it to me in a Facebook message: a screenshot of one of the first status updates he’d made on Facebook from over a decade ago, about a year after we’d met. Facebook had summoned it up from some distant server for its daily delivery of “On This Day’’ memories. 

“. . . and his boyfriend are really gay for each other,’’ it read. “Aw,’’ I thought to myself. Also, “Ew.’’ 

It may not seem fair or very romantic to compare this affectionate little message from my husband to a hairball — and I will probably face some measure of trouble for that later, so take whatever satisfaction you can from that. But, as I will explain to him, it’s also a completely apt comparison, because, much like a hairball, this regurgitated status update represents something we consumed (perhaps unconsciously) and ultimately rejected from our system: the third person. 

In real life, use of the third person as the first person is a fast, reliable, culturally certified way to determine if someone is completely out of his or her mind. But online, the third person was the coy mode through which millions of us introduced ourselves to the Internet. And looking back, it also signals a critical transition in the way we expressed (and regarded) ourselves. 

The primordial form of the modern-day status update may well be the “away’’ messages that one could tuck beneath one’s handle on early messaging apps. Such limited research meant that “eating lunch’’ or “BRB’’ were as complex as one’s status could get — and I recall that even feeling like a touch too much ambient disclosure for comfort. 

Similarly static were the profile text updates one could perform on MySpace, though cumbersome “bulletins’’ offered a long-form place to go off on people long before Twitter cornered that market. But Facebook’s arrival and fast ascent between 2004 and 2006 — marked by the fall of the Wall and the rise of the News Feed in September 2006 — is where social-media history turns a messy corner. 

The launch of the News Feed coincided with the launch of the real-time “Status Update,’’ which, much like people once did, moved freely through time and space. Facebook was clearly feeling the pressure of another ascendant platform, Twitter, and responding by transitioning its static phonebook of “Friends’’ into a conveyor belt of content.

The third person was essential to getting this operation running. 

For the first year worth of status updates, Facebook supplied a compulsory “is’’ before every blank status as a writing prompt for users. The idea was to get tentative posters posting by giving them a little nudge out of the plane. But in doing so, a curious side effect was that it also prompted users to pause before posting: “What am I doing?’’

Thus, social media self-consciousness was born; but it wasn’t “is’’ ’s fault. (Which is really hard to say aloud.) As verbs go, “is’’ was (and is) an all-encompassing gateway to possibilities both transitive and in-. Is is innocent. 

But to that first wave of Facebook settlers, “is’’ was rage-making in a way that, at the time, felt quite new online.

It’s presence stoked resentment from people who chafed at filling any kind of form. (I was one of them. It’s why I reflexively said “Ew.’’)

This resentment led to grammatically incorrect status updates by those who’d grown to tune out the demands of “is’’ like a toothache. This wave of defiance, in turn, drew ire from first-generation grammar Nazis, who themselves were inspired to form angry nascent Facebook groups and anti-“is’’ advocacy campaigns. It was like a cute little scale model of how bad the Internet is now. 

In any case, Facebook caved to the clamor of users in December 2007, removing the “is’’ from all Status Updates, and eventually shifting its prompt system to half-tone questions that resemble texts from someone you’re about to dump: “What are you doing right now?’’ 

I was no fan of the third person, but I do wonder sometimes (whoa Carrie Bradshaw — sorry about that) what would have happened if it had endured as a convention of social media. 

Would it still provide that tiny caesura of consideration that once forced us to examine the moment, the value of it, and our place in it, before translating it into text?

Would the accumulation of those microseconds of forethought yield an increase in self-awareness across our culture?

Is a discourse driven by the first person what has led us to such collective self-centeredness? And can a grammatical turn help restore reflection to our discourse? 

Michael Andor Brodeur isn’t sure about any of it, but Michael Andor Brodeur is seriously just about ready to try anything right now. 

Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MBrodeur.