About three months ago, I got fed up with facebook’s forever changing privacy settings and deleted (or rather deactivated) my personal account. I haven’t looked back since. Will I rejoin in the future? Maybe. Since I have left though, two of my besties have followed suit, giving me even less reasons to rejoin. In fact, most of my close friends have either left the site or have never been on it.
Besides the privacy issues, I think my main reason for abandoning facebook was that it just became a bit too much. Really. I don’t want to build some farm, join a mafia or play poker. I don’t even want to see updates on your every move.
On a recent episode of Criminal Minds (the Internet is Forever – season 5, episode 22), one of the characters puts it best: “Eating sushi tonight...yum. Boss is keeping me late at work...grrr – I mean, whose life is so important that we would be interested in this kind of detail?” I know I'm not interested – anymore.
Even worse than facebook is twitter. Remove the albums, games and events from facebook and you’re basically left with what twitter offers: status updates.
Proudly I can say that I’ve avoided the twitter thing. I'm pretty sure that there is no one (not even my own mother) who would want to get moment by moment updates on my life. But my concerns are not shared by many seeing as twitter has been attracting approximately 300, 000 new users daily and is slated to have as many members as facebook within a year’s time (that’s over 400 million).
I know I won’t be adding to twitter’s numbers, and since quitting facebook, I am now a part of that illustrious group who thinks that they are too cool for “in” social media sites.
Do I miss reading other people’s walls and going through all their photos? Sometimes. But overall, I’m happy to be back in the real world.
It’s a pity that “Quit Facebook Day”, on May 31, didn’t go viral. Many agreed that facebook lost its roots and even vowed to quit, but few went through with it. Maybe they were too addicted or maybe it was the fact that it’s almost impossible to actually delete a profile. The tricky site shows you how to deactivate your profile but there is another, lesser known, process involved in order to delete it.
If I ever do go back to facebook, (again - this may or may not take place soon), I will most likely have only 25 friends, in efforts to regulate privacy issues on my own. For now, however, I'm content with my new addiction: Blackberry Messenger.
I'm a former facebook user and this was my second time quitting. In the beginning facebook was cool, especially reconnecting with long lost school mates but after catching up then what?! To each his own but for me i'm done with facebook and other types of social media for personal use. My issue is simialr to your argument...who cares what i'm doing at every moment of the day and I don't care what others are doing at every moment of the day either. I have had a few facebook stalkers as well, you know the type people you haven't seen, thought of or spoke to in decades and then they stalk your inbox and try to add you as a friend and comment on all your pictures and posts. I think people like facebook because everyone wants to be a celebrity and facebook and twitter are for those who can't get a reality show of their own. I'm to busy living my life in 'real time'.
Lol. The whole BBM thing is something i refuse to join, as well as twitter. No real reason really for the bbm, i guess im just hating on it, but as for twitter. . .I really think its a waste of time and pulls us away from reality a little. Sure it may be fun to creep our friends and favourite celebrities on a daily basis, but whats there to gain other than useless knowledge of others. As a current facebook user, I find it to be the most useful social networing sites out there. Yeah it also has a lot of useless apps, groups, etc. but I've been able to keep in touch with those away from me, such as my ball coach at uni and even relatives. Because really, who's willing to pay for long distance calling lol. Anyway I agree with Michelle's indirect comment that you could be happier, better off, or even just the same back in the real world.