Teeth and bones are the hard part, but don’t give up the dream.
Brain cells too, but I’m working hard at killing those off.
I quit about a month ago after about nine years on FB…
2 Likes
I am like your wife, and it’s starting to freak me out. But no one I know e-mails or even really texts anymore, so I’m worried if I go cold turkey I’ll never hear from anyone again. I’ve got to do it though.
1 Like
Survival?
Sure you don’t want to raise that bar…just a little?
1 Like
Your wife and mine should be Facebook friends.
1 Like
I’m not a Luddite by any means. I’m just becoming more selective about the way I choose to spend the precious little time I have on this Earth. I left Twitter in January and Facebook (for good) a few weeks ago. I like to travel, hike, paint, sew, and write music. Every moment I’m on Twitter and Facebook, reading inane memes, political pandering, and 300 of my closest fake friends bragging about how pretend-perfect their lives are, is time away from those activities which make me truly happy to be alive. Whatever I’m losing from not being on Facebook pales in comparison to what I’ve taken back. I am honestly so much happier since leaving Facebook and Twitter. I disagree with your post, and with The Verge blog piece it quotes, because you could be discouraging people from doing the hard work of breaking the social media addiction and making a choice that truly could be in their best interest. I’ve sewn over a dozen garments since I took up sewing in January and it makes me so happy. I would not have had time to do that if I was still spending hours scrolling mindlessly through social media feeds. I love making things for people and that’s a much more powerful expression of love than hitting “like” on a Facebook post they wrote. I think what it comes down to is “quality” vs. “quantity” of social interactions. Personally, I choose quality. Bring on the Rolodex (which, with email and texting, is actually quite easy to maintain - selective use of technology is a thing).
6 Likes
“Entitlement”? Wow. Rest assured: anyone who would judge me or believe me to be entitled for choosing not to be on Facebook is not anyone I want or need in my life.
1 Like
Back in 2005 (? sometime around then) I was in my university’s play. The stage manager wanted to use this nifty new thing to share notes instead of a bulletin board and email lists. So we all had to join Facebook, which at the time was college-only. I hated it then, I hate it now.
But my entire extended family uses it, and that’s how everyone shares pics and information. I have it set up to email me when someone mentions or tags me or invites me to another damned birthday party, and then I go on & look. The husband uses it regularly for business and personal life; he’s a social creature & self-employed so he has to use the platform his clients are on, and he’s OK with trading some privacy and data-sucking for convenience and self-promotion ability. No one uses his web page, just his FB page.
I’m still a phone & text person - I love the idea of texting a question and getting an answer without having to call & have conversations - but I do have long conversations with friends and family occasionally. I’m out of the loop with everyone and everything else, and that’s OK with me.
2 Likes
Actually my youngest relatives, the ones who will care for me in my dotage if I have any luck at all, are not yet on the internet. We correspond by mail & are currently writing books together by mailing small blank books back & forth. It is a joy to get mail from them, hand-written & illustrated; lucid, funny, direct & painstaking. I am getting to know them in a way that could never happen on social media. One of them just wrote me that she saves all my letters in a cigar box.
3 Likes
I’d applaud you, but I don’t want to startle you.
4 Likes
As often happens, I’m reminded of a Simpsons episode.
1 Like
Nope, late 40s. Just as bleak of an outlook on the future as you apparently have. But that’s okay; as Slavoj Žižek says, I’m happy to ‘enjoy my symptoms’.
Facebook is like drug addition: when you’re on it, you feel stupid and ashamed. When you aren’t on it, you’re glad and hope you can stay away forever. That capitulates into boredom and the inevitable return.
2 Likes
Make one with Elizabeth Holmes, while yer at it
The moment I really started hating Facebook wasn’t the one before I left. It was after, when I realized I was socially excluded from a lot of important events. To tell the least, 3 good friends died in these 6 year I am now away from Facebook and every single time, I missed the burial only to be told that “Sorry, we only informed about the time and place via Facebook. Why aren’t you on it anyway? It’s so convenient.”
The pressure of Facebook is extraordinary already when you just want to visit the page of your favourite small concert venue who is only using Facebook to communicate events and half of it is covered by a sign telling you to register. But yeah, it’s just “so convenient”.
1 Like
That can be hard on a marriage.
4 Likes
https://alternativeto.net/software/facebook/?license=opensource
A decentralized model
Ethan Zuckerman is
director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab. He also
thinks the corporate, monopolistic structure of Facebook is worth
rethinking. “Facebook has an awful lot of power by virtue of
the fact that you have a single company making decisions for about 2
billion people all around the world,” he says.Zuckerman says the next iteration of social networks could be
decentralized, instead of run by one company. One example of this is a
network that already exists, called Mastodon.
It looks like Twitter, but it’s open source: Anyone can create their
own community, hosted on their own server, with their own rules. “There’s
lots of little Mastodon servers that have anywhere from a few hundred
to a few tens of thousands of people on one another,” he explains. “But
they confederate: You can share information between those servers.” And
while the service doesn’t have tons of users so far, Zuckerman says the
architecture seems sound.
3 Likes
True, but in fairness, not changing in 20 years might be worse.
3 Likes
I only meant that people who feel they shouldn’t be paying any social penalty for leaving FaceBook are essentially expecting their friends and family to do the extra work. (I’ve seen a few FB leavers get seriously annoyed because people forgot to invite them to parties or they missed important social developments among their peers.)
I didn’t mean that any poster here in particular fell into that category.
Sorry for my lack of clarity.
