I've deactivated my Facebook account. There, I said it.
I only opened it in the first place because I'm too weak-willed to resist the siren calls of my friends who kept inviting me in. At least I've been strong enough to keep a 1:1 ratio between what I would call my real world friends, or at least acquaintances, and what Facebook calls friends. The balance was tipped by an increasing number of complete strangers who want to be my friends too. It just seems unkind to reject them while accepting others - so much easier not to present them with the temptation. Sorry, people. I'm flattered and I'm sure you're all lovely, but if you want to say nice things to me, my e-mail is publicly available. I'm also well in touch with my inner grumpy old sod and I simply don't want to write on your Fun Wall or fill in a quiz or play Mornington Crescent or see if I'm within six degrees of separation from Daniel Craig or generally tell you what I'm doing.
For anyone else wanting to follow in my footsteps, which felt quite pioneering but obviously were not, here's how to do it.
Facebook sows the seeds of its own destruction by presenting you with a checklist of reasons why you're doing this. You click on one of them and a counter-reason pops up. I clicked on "I don't find it useful". Up came: well, you might if you interacted with your friends more.
Which irritated me so much I clicked "Finish". Hah! I might have been wavering up till that point.
Even so, here's how it made me feel.
I did the same thing... it stayed deactivated for about 2 weeks.
ReplyDeleteBut I completely sympathise with you. It's irritating; all I want to do is communicate with my friends, and I ended up getting so many emails telling me that people had added random applications. When I left, it pointed out that this was most likely my fault as you could change which emails you got.... blahhh JOG ON.
I find that post sad. You've failed to see through all the rubbish in facebook to why it's so genius.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason facebook is amazing is because everybody else uses it. If you want something made public, facebook works. If you want photos of people you just take them. If you want somebody's e-mail address 'cos you lost it, it's up there.
I ignore all the tacky applications and use my facebook profile as an information page for others. The only e-mails I get are those saying people have written on my wall (which is just like getting a normal e-mail from them anyway).
It's a genius way for me to connect with my friends on a mass scale without any hassle.
But you got tangled up in the web of useless, tacky applications and silly ideas and so gave up. Rubbish.
Au contraire. I feel I struck a blow for the conventional forms of social getting-on that have lasted us for thousands of years. Once the great plague comes and all technological civilisation is wiped out, you'll be needing these old school skills. You mark my words.
ReplyDeleteI won't bother with Facebook then. I mainly use LiveJournal and also have a MySpace (mainly as a place to keep links to bands that might play locally).
ReplyDeleteBecause if FB is going to get all Stalinist/Passive-Aggressive on my arse (or at least my screen) when I try to leave then I am not going to bother to go there in the first place.
Oh all right, I do now have Facebook - mainly because my local is closing down and all the people involved with it are going to disperse and I got an invite to the last-night-ever party. But then quite a bit of UK SF Fandom is on FB also. I just ignore the invitations to participate in random applications and also the chain letters which people I would really have thought more intelligent than to send on chain letters, do send on.
ReplyDelete