Note: there’s a lot of swearing in this post. Please add all of your complaints onto the first unrelated youtube video you can find - preferably something SJWy so you get the best trolls.
I’ve finally gone and done it. That unconscionable, ruthless and nonsensical act tantamount to modern social suicide. I’ve deleted my Facebook account, and I do feel rather vitriolic about it :D.
Backstory: Many moons back I avoided it like the plague but a pretty girl (my now wife) convinced me otherwise and for some time since having a Facebook account make sense to me. It kept me in touch with people I’d otherwise lose touch with and it gave me a good place to keep and share my pictures of things like this little self-indulgent life-journey I’m on. But recently, I’ve realised: that’s all complete and utter bollocks. So, I’ve gone ahead and deleted my Facebook account :D
Side Note: I’ve had a range of reactions to this so far and I find the fact that anyone actually cares either way to be actually quite interesting, hence the rant.
Here is why:
My first facebook-is-bullshit inkling was the realisation: how many real friendships can one person foster? I simply don’t have the time or the ability to maintain a few hundred friendships, that’s ridiculous. And if the argument is “well Facebook friends are really just acquaintances, you don’t really act like they’re friends do you?”, then why the fuck do I want to know all the in’s and outs of these random fucking peoples lives? Just because we went to the same school or worked together for a few months in our first job? It feels like I know more about these chum(p)s than I do about the people I really should be spending my time focusing on. I know when they’ve gotten new jobs and how that tubby chap I care not-very-much about has managed to waddle his way to the end of a charity fun run. It’s info I don’t need and certainly don’t want at a volume that I simply can’t digest.
And, for the actual people I do want to maintain ties with, Facebook sucks balls when it comes to maintaining a real friendship with these peeps. I’ve already read about their random lifetime achievements via their Facebook status so when it comes time to actually fucking talking to them, they’re telling me stuff I already knew. This means that conversations with people I’m supposed to care about bore me, as it’s now old news and getting through these chats is a repetitive chore that I have to sit through in the hopes of hearing something they didn’t put on their interweb feed.
I’d posit that Facebook is actually a detriment to real friendships. It stops you talking to people, and I’ve started to think that being forced to speak to people, being forced to ask them about their lives, to form words that show caring and wanting to know about them is a part of forming that bond as well. They say that if you smile it makes you happy, because of the muscles in your face or something. Well maybe if you ask someone how they are and have an honest discourse about it, it’ll help you to care about them that little bit more too?
I guess this all kinda relates to the societal “bubble” issue we’re having of late and I think it kind of proves** how human social interactions need to be more complex than whatever Facebook’s news feed algorithms decide to tell you on the 32nd time you checked it today. We can’t and shouldn’t limit ourselves to the persona-buckets that it attempts to cram us into to fit its data/business-models and the more social communication we put through these heavily sorted channels the worse the problem is going to get.
And as for the photo-sharing thing, no-one really cares about your holiday/nomad/graduation/wedding/baby pictures, it’s just self-aggrandising. And if you still want to, go use one of the million better platforms to do it with all the other food-picture-wankers out there :D
Anyways, back to normal scheduling next week***, I just felt like this little revelation I’d had was worth a ramble. There are many more eloquent and noble views on how naff Facebook is and how it’s fucking the internet. For info on that maybe try your internet search engine of choice. Hell, getting out of Facebook’s closed-internet hell-hole would probably be a good thing :P.
* I may not be able/care to count… got you to click though eh? :P
** Not actual proof in any way, I’m most likely waffling shit.
*** Take that as whenever I get round to it :D.