By Phil Harper
I’m deleting my Facebook account.
You’re probably not interested in why I’m deleting my Facebook account, but for those of you that are I’ll explain my reasonings in ten less-than-succinct points.
1) There are too many lines of communication between me and you. You write on my wall, I text you back, you send me a text, I write on your wall. You email me, I email back, you call me, I answer, we talk, you write on my wall to follow up the phone call, and eventually invite me to the very thing we just arranged. Just what in the name of christ is going on? I can’t keep up.
2) Because there’s too much going on, I rarely get back to people. Then we meet in real life and you might be upset because I didn’t respond to a post you left in an event inviation message about what we should do on Friday night.
When Friday night comes I’ve made arrangements with people who’s faces I saw in real life and not on Facebook. I’m embarrased, you’re upset, ‘we’ll do something next week!’ we say sheepishly, ‘not if we arrange it on Facebook’ I muse.
Nothing ever happens
3) I stopped checking event invites about a year ago. Sorry I didn’t come to your party.
4) On my phone, rather than checking it when I have a message, I now obessively check facebook every hour or so just to see if something amazing has happened. Nothing amazing ever happens. September 11th part two is probably what I’m hoping has happened, but it never ever does.
The whole world is waiting for it, we’re trapped in a global mental pre-puke anxiety festival, we know it’s coming, can we just get it out of the way please? Anyway, checking Facebook every ten minutes for major events like “OMG I’m getting MARRIED!” or “Jeremy got his cousin pregnant,” is definitely not worth it. Time to rein in the OCD.
5) The main reason. I waste faaaar too much time on Facebook pretending I’m socialising, when all I’m really doing is looking at pictures of what you did, or reading your status about what you did.
This means that when we meet in real life and have a conversation, more often than not I might say “Oh yeah, I saw that on Facebook” and you’ll be disappointed because you were really excited about telling me what you did, but you posted pictures about it and status updates about it over and over again, and I pretty much lived that moment with you already.
Let’s have a beer
Thus our conversation over a beer is a little dull and we’re forced to talk about abject things like ‘the name of that band who used to sing that song on that advert’ or some other benile nothingness because we know each others lives inside out. Wouldn’t it be nice to meet your friends and have a catchup that involves knowing NOTHING about what they did this week? That would be nice, lets do that sometime over a beer?
6) Second main reason. Facebook seems absolutely hellbent on knowing everything there is to know about me. The other week I uploaded some pictures and was asked “Who is this?” underneath every single person… I felt like I was being interrogated by Mossad for in a terror investigation. “ALL I DID WAS GO TO A PARTY!?… LET ME GO FACEBOOK! *sob sob* I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG!?”
Imagine you’re showing your friends your real photos in a real coffee shop, a strange man in a dark suit who you do not know appears at the table. Each and every time you show your friend a new photo he says “Who is this?”, you tell him who it is, the man in the dark suit writes it down. This continues until you’ve shown all of your photos to your friends. The man in the dark suit takes his notepad and leaves the coffee shop and you don’t think anything of it. Perfectly normal day right?
No. It’s insane. And just because you do it on Facebook doesn’t make it any less insane. I don’t know why Facebook want to use facial recognition on all of the photos that are uploaded, and I don’t know why they want to know who EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS, but I don’t like it.
7) I have a phone. YOU have a phone. Lets talk ON THE PHONE. I have unlimited minutes that I don’t use, so do you? Old and dear friends, lets hang out on our telephones more… Add me on Skype and we can talk in real time, or with our voices, or with webcams, and you can get my undivided attention. I won’t be jostling from one Facebook update to the other, I’ll stop checking my emails, we can have a nice conversation and arrange our next meeting…
8] 21 group invitations.
9) 24 page suggestions.
10) Facebook advertising was fairly intrusive until I deleted all of my likes and interests. For whatever reason, Facebook now thinks I’ve had an organ transplant and need support.
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This article made me disable mine as well.
I’ve done it before though. For reasons familiar to yours. But I always enable it again after a few days.
I’ve been “clean” since saturday now.
Feels kinda weird though, but It’s a bit of a relief.
Another thing with facebook is that it really fuels my social paranoia.
“why hasn’t she written me back? perhaps she’s not online… but she is, because she commened on this other guys status just now… so she probably doesn’t want to talk to me… could it have been something I said? It must have been something I said… or perhaps she’s found out something about me that she doesn’t like… what could that be… perhaps she’s found out…”
Etc etc etc etc. And it goes on and on and on.
It’s not healthy.
At least not for me.
You can also read in to text messages/facebook emails & chat too much rather than a normal face-to-face conversation.
These comments ring so true to me. I do not use Facebook or Twitter, i do not want strangers to know what is going on in my head or my life. It seems that everyone on the street has their head in their phone, looking down all the time tap tap tap.
I hate facebook as my Daughter got into it and and dragged down with it and all it’s negative teenagers. Our family life has nearly been destroyed by it as they all teach each other how to ‘do things’ and… well, say no more.
I have read this article with much interest, and found that as a user of Facebook I find myself agreeing with most if not all the negative comments that have been made. However like any thing in life it also has it good points. Facebook is about choices you choose to have on your Facebook page. That could be any person that comes along and claims they want to be your “Friend” or just simply close freinds and family members! It opens up communication lines that are invaluable in busy modern life! A place where the people you care about are always a click away! Mobile phone numbers are easily lost! People move away! Facebook provides a central place where (unless they have no Facebook page themselves)! People are always reachable!
One main feature of Facebook that has been a real plus to my life, is the ability to Reacquaint with people from primary and secondary schools, who would otherwise I would possibly never have had the opportunity!
Facebook for me remains a means of enriching my life! Using it for the money possibilities it offers! It will, I suppose remain a good servant, but a bad Master!
Personally I hate real-time conversations – I’m busy, I don’t have time for people to interrupt me with a phone call. Send me an email and I’ll read it when I have time.
Similarly I’m not all that interested in small talk with my friends about what they did this week – it’s usually the same thing they did last week (and do every week) anyway. We keep up with that stuff via Twitter and Facebook, so we can talk about something more interesting when we do occasionally meet up.
Facebook’s incredibly poor record for respecting the privacy of its users (AKA its product) does concern me though, which is why I keep very little information on there (and most particularly, don’t upload photos or allow myself to be tagged in other people’s photos). I don’t mind sharing my information with other people, I’m not so keen on it being hoovered up by companies (or governments). It’s useful for organising events, and for light social contact, just be choosy about what you share with it or through it.
Totally agree , mines going soon altho it has been usefull for old buddies to contact me, just gonna use it for basics, and at one stage i ended up with two ruddy accounts, i pissed a few ppl off cos i told truth I have been involved in local left wing politics,,,,,,,,,,,how awfull of me, Good luck to you guys, Blessings, J , Btw, the weather is great here today, (-:
Perhaps by being a member of Facebook you get a sense of belonging to a community of people who want to feel the same. For instance, why should I bother witting here?, because is safer, I don’t want to be seen and I am basically bored and just want to be seen as worthy person expressing my views and being admired ? heard . Perhaps this is the only way for many to be seen respectfully in a world full of stereotypes, prejudices and appearances. This is indeed the beauty of writing anonymously and without being seen , you can be truly who you are. Can’t you?
On the other hand I have 98 Facebook “friends” although deep inside I know so well they are just people from my past who can’t be bother seeing me in real life or even calling me at all. They are just so happy having me nearby on the screen at any time when they feel just like me, isolated, bored and lacking of friends. In the end, you can actually live lying yourself your whole life and it may even feel comfortable.
Is it that what you want?
All those people who say they were deleting it, I would be interested if you have.
Facebook is quite addictive, it’s not that it’s fun, or a chemical addiction just curiosity and belonging that is the major pull of it.
Nobody likes to be left out of the loop. I used to enjoy the pager/public phone box days where you left a message with a third party. It wasn’t efficient but the race and clatter of 20p’s falling was half the fun ha ha
I met a fellow artist and got an exhibition together, all though face book.. I have met some lovely pagan fiends on there who I am still in touch with… by the way, I am bi-polar and don’t get on with a lot of people,, they find me either too full on or just weird… on FB friends get to know me and not my illness.
Face book is the last resort of the braindamaged.
I read American pages with amazement.I am British,proud of it? NO! You must be joking. Like everywhere else in the World its a Fairy land like face book. No one is real anymore .Like I read that as an American you HAVE to have something.
I am this or I am that.
I met a girl who said her her brother took drugs .I just said “shoot I’m sorry you have to deal with a drug addict is it difficult?”
She said very sharply NO HE IS not a drug addict he is Chemically dependant!!
Then another had some shit I never even heard of.
No body said “HEY I am normal”.
Well I mean you cant be , cos you Havent got SOMETHING.
Do Americans think it makes them sort of Millisecond Famous to Have something .
So that leads me back to Face book.
If I send you a pretend pig could you shove it up your butt so I can do pretend surgery and save your pretend life and get a pretend award.??
500,000,000 people use this shit.
AND wonder why the World is coming apart at the seams.
Let Facebook handle the World economy, got to be saner the the Bunch of Crap that run it now.
I mean like I got to take a wage cut cos the Economy is Screwed,Like I HAD ANYTHING to do with that.
Like ole Barrack said to me “hey what the Fuck I do here??” and I made a wrong answer,so I got to be punished.
I send you a pretend 1,000,000,000,000,000,000$.
Whew!! Just missed World recession.Thanks Man!!
I can agree with you on here. I deleted my Facebook whilst in hospital after a spell in intensive care in the summer. Aside from illness related problems, I am finding myself being much more productive at work, not just staring gormlessly at Facebook for hours on end achieving bugger all. Well done to everyone who has escaped its claws!
Epic fail Zuckerburg