In one day my Facebook account will be permanently removed. I'm on the fence about reactivating it because I really haven't missed it. There are some real upsides from not being on Facebook and I'm not sure going back would be worth it.
1. When I see people in real life I actually have shit to talk about. When you try a new restaurant I won't know it until i talk to you and you tell me about it. Did you try a great new beer? I'll miss the picture of your glass of beer but you can tell me all about it and I'll be like "yeah, sounds tasty". Those vacation photos? Have me over for dinner and show me them. I love dinner.
2. No pressure to congratulate people on their anniversaries, promotions, kid's wedding or graduation, it's not that I don't want to it's just that I feel shitty when I forget to. Birthdays are kind of the same thing, I want to wish you a happy birthday, I really do, I just don't want the stress of trying to do better than "Happy Birthday!!".
3. Memes, I don't see them anymore. No more pictures of kittens that say "I iz evilz" and no more old timey clip art with funny expressions about how vodka and bacon fix everything. The best thing is I'll never see another "Try to name an erogenous zone without the letter A, it's harder than you think" It's nipple and penis.
4. I have more Halo time.
5. I love to argue, so when I see an inflammatory statement I'm going to chime in. The problem is that you can NEVER change someone's opinion about abortion, gun control, the death penalty, NASA, the existence of god, gay marriage or any other hot button issue because we're so polarized we don't even want to try to reach common ground. So my wheels have stopped spinning.
6. There are less and less temptations to be a dick. There's also now zero temptation to "check in" from my bathroom.
7. There's a chance that if I'm out somewhere I might accidentally run into you. What a great fucking
surprise! You're out, minding your own business and POW! There's me! Neither of us saw it coming.
Maybe those don't sound like great reasons but I like them. I really enjoy Facebook, I even understand that it's a free service and I'm ok with them selling my info to advertisers, Facebook gotta eat. It's fun to see what people are up to and the silly, witty, fun interactions with friends are great. I think at the end of the day I'm a little more chill when I don't feel the need to be funny, smart or politically correct.
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My life as a pariah
I hear you. But I suppose it comes down to the fact that Facebook is more or less like real life. It amplifies lots of the habits, pressures, insecurities that we share 'in the flesh'. The downside is that there's a permanent record there in some way.
ReplyDeleteBut if it's true of our darker selves, it's also true of the better angels of our nature, so to speak. We can reach out to people in the positive ways as well. I like it for that.
At this point it's become pretty much the only social life I have. I could consider that kind of sad and lame (and part of me does, trust me), but instead I just make the best of it. Having moved around so much in the past few years, I haven't made many new close friends. So my best friends are all on FB. And I get a lot out of the interactions there.
But I want to take it further. I really want to do more hanging out digitally via Skype or whatever. I've done it a couple of times with friends and it's been great to have a real conversation with people instead of clicking a 'thumbs up' image near a postage stamp sized picture of their cat.
I agree with you about taking it further, as a stay at home my human contact has mostly been through FB and I've found that I want to find ways and time to physically interact with people instead of just making comments and "liking". I'm terrible at phone conversations and think Skype would be a personal disaster.
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