Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Facebook Schmacebook


I've left Facebook.

I had been toying with the idea for a while , I finally cut the ties last week.
I thought you might be interested in knowing my reasons, in no particular order.

I was spending small yet increasingly frequent amounts of time looking at the irrelevant snapshots of people I simply did not know. A few weeks ago I looked at the holiday pictures of a cousin of a friend. Somebody I have never met and will almost certainly never meet.

There's nothing wrong with aquaintances , theres nothing wrong with keeping in touch with such folk. I have a phone full of numbers I hardly use. I have countless email addresses. I'm just not sure I need to read their wisecracks about my life, nor am I sure I need to post updates about my rambling existence for them to comment on. Catch 22?

It was Oscar Wilde who went along the lines of 'spending too much time on the little things and not enough time on the important things'. I was spending too much time on little things.

Aquaintances posting pictures of the boozy teenage years. No thanks.

It's been over a week. Nobody has noticed.

A parent at school asked me to be a friend. I accepted. Nothing was ever actually said. All this happened online. That's no way to behave.

Some of the vitriol that poured out of people regarding the recent public sector strike made me wonder why I was in that room. It was not a party I wanted to attend, surrounded by people I did not like. I experience enough real and challenging relationships everyday, I don't need cyber equivalents.

I really don't want to be there.

I have a number of dear friends. I am a lucky man. Those that matter are in regular contact outside of Facebook. I hang out with a number of good people who have never been anywhere near the site.

3 comments:

Emily Fabpants said...

Following your lovely text, I thought, 'It's the school holidays, I wonder if Mondale is celebrating with a blog entry or two'.

Hooray. You’ve made my day. My Facebook departure decision was for similar reasons. Back in the day - when I was much better at posting blog entries - I wrote about it. I left Facebook in 2007, blogged about it in 2009, and my self-imposed leper status continues.

"Life is what happens when you’re not on Facebook."
http://emilyfabpants.blogspot.com/2009/10/here-by-omission-we-dont-need-to-be.html

Odd to read a post I wrote 2 years ago! There is barely a soul on earth without a Facebook account now. I’m more of a leper than ever.

Welcome to the ‘Up Your Bum’ Facebook colony. It’s not always easy. I need the company.

The look on my pregnant pal’s face when she answered the door must have been something else. Yeah, Facebook status updates don’t reach everyone. My pal said: “In the context of my pregnancy, I did think some of your texts were weird!”

So, how do you do with news websites? I now subscribe to areas of ‘news’ interest by email, click on links as needed, and desperately try not to read news stories drip fed as popular on every single webpage. It’s a hard discipline, but after years of being sucked into a vacuum of predominantly pointless detritus, with worsening behaviour on my part, it’s a needs must scenario.

On another note, I do intend to start blogging again soon. If you can do it, I really have no excuse. It’s win-win really. I enjoy putting a post together and it helps my memory. As a bonus, two or three people say they like my entries!

I will add; there’s a completed blog post, written by yours truly in October, which still hasn't gone live. Why? I paused to cook dinner before posting it. I have eaten a lot since then! The world is very distracting... even without Facebook and pointless news stories. I need all the help I can get.

Mondale said...

I just feel really good about it!

Maestra said...

I noticed