Recently I’ve been having this rather large and incredibly corny debate in my head and with other people regarding the world’s largest social advertising network. It all boils down to me realizing tired of facebook and I think I should leave it once and for all. Most of you might remember I’ve done this twice now. I’m probably turning into the boy who cried wolf, but that was then, before facebook had over a billion users, before businesses were pretty much required to have a page, before ads, before those stupid one dollar gifts, before farmville, hell it was before newsfeed was added. That was back when the facebook was solely about connecting you with people.
But now that I’ve connected with everyone I’ve begun unconnecting with them too. I think I left college with three to five hundred “friends”, many of whom I simply attended high school with or met in college classes, I didn’t even have an interest in their ongoing lives. It took a few years but I finally paired my friend list down to around 150. Which to me sounds like a lot of people but some of those friends have over A THOUSAND (facebook) FRIENDS! Which is totally cool, but how can you be interested in that many people’s lives? Maybe you can. Anyway. The reason I’ve stayed with it since moving to Illinois is that it was a great way to keep in touch with the people I like without actually keeping in touch with them. This is just the way life is now, so I won’t bitch about that too.
So here is where my disdain for facebook starts. I’m a guy who just wants to use it to know what my friends are up to. Lately thats been what they’re drinking, where they are, who they married, and what kid just fell out of a vagina. Which is awesome, that’s why I’m connected. But there is also a vast scourge of regurgitated unoriginal content having little to do with anybody’s lives (I’m looking at you ecards). I’ve become a professional at hiding game notifications and requests. I’ve even unliked businesses and other pages because if I want to find more info I’ll just check their page at a relevant time, or I’ll sign up for their e-mail newsletter.
On top of all of this I have another major issue. Most of what I consider to be my real life closest friends on facebook, the people who I’d like to know what’s going in in their lives, no longer participate aside from the occasional ‘like’ because they are friends with too many people to share their ideas and thoughts. Professional lives have crossed into their personal life, and pictures and opinions are now too dicey to share socially. Facebook made these cool friend lists to prevent such happenings but they are apparently underutilized.
Lastly I hate that newsfeed sorting constantly reverts back to top rather than new. For some reason this isn't a permeant setting and it drives me up the wall. To me, the top post sorting doesn't make sense. Plus I hate when people I don't know bring old posts back from their order by liking or commenting on it days, weeks, or even years later.
I’ve taken great pains to make my facebook time shorter and simpler so I don’t waste so much time on it. I’ve been largely successful but even with all of my efforts of friend lists, unliking and unfriending I’m not getting the same easy straightforward experience I once enjoyed with this social network.
Which is a roundabout way of saying, maybe I should quit facebook once and for all, I don’t like it anymore. If you’ve read my rant this far you’re probably thinking this blog post has been a lot of whining about one of the most lame and insignificant parts of someone’s life.
Which brings up another point, facebook is no longer insignificant. There are over a billion users. Hell, people in some parts of the world consider facebook the internet. Some businesses opt just for a free facebook page rather than a webpage. Bands announce tours, share links to early releases. Stores announce sales with offer codes available only to people on their page. Authors announce book tours and release dates, newscasts air comments and posts. Not to mention all of the pages just for pushing news, teaching, and entertaining. So leaving facebook can disconnect a person from some of their favorite things in the world, having a tool that makes it so easy to consume this information is rather useful, some might even say necessary.
So in our digital age can someone feasibly quit?
Of course! But at the same time you have this tool to remain connected to the world. A tool that is relatively easy to use, so quitting just makes life a little more challenging for you. But only a little. So right now i’m not sure if I’m going to totally nuke my account by changing my password to something I’ll never remember and log off for good, or if I’m just going to go inactive to pop on occasionally to check out something I need to know of. What I can say for sure is facebook as a platform isn’t about connecting people any more, its about connecting money to facebook through people and I’m not enjoying myself anymore.
Also I’m quite certain 95% of my readers of this blog follow the link through facebook so I do have that going against me if I quit. The irony of automatically sharing my quitting facebook blog post to facebook is one I enjoy.
EDIT: I wrote most of this over two weeks ago. Since then I’ve taken all my shortcuts from my phone and computers away so I'm not unconsciously checking. I can honestly say, I haven’t missed it. The only time I needed it was for work, I can just make a work account and nuke my personal one. I’m done folks. Done for good.
After having a conversation with someone else who very recently quit I realized I’m engaging in an uphill battle towards simplicity and straightforward updates which isn't the facebook platform any more.
I guess you can find me on instagram but honestly most of you have my email address and phone number, I’ll still be around.
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