By the end of 2017 it became very clear to me that I hate facebook. I dont hate the company. I dont hate on people making money. I dont hate Zuck. I just hated the product. It didn’t give me joy or add any value to my life. The amount of advertised content became ridiculous and my stream was full of stuff I „might like“ or my „friends“ have liked. Value was given to the posts that generated engagement, instead of the stuff that was interesting to me. As I scrolled through the endless timeline of cats, tasty posts and bullshit „news“ I pondered why I did this.
I couldn’t give you an answer, even now. Maybe to feel alive, to feel something. Maybe because of the fear of missing out. I told myself I only use Facebook for it’s great chat app, but even that was a lie. After staring at the blue abyss for another day I decided it was time to let go and delete the account. I informed my friends with a few weeks notice and on christmas eve I sat down at my fathers MacBook Air and pushed the delete button(s). Facebook would hold my account for another 4 weeks, if I maybe would decide to come back. 4 weeks went by and it was gone. I checked out all my data beforehand. Facebook lets you download a nice little bundle with all your pictures and posts so you can reminice about the good old days and then forget about it in some backup folder.
So, what’s changed?
Nothing, really. I don’t feel an epic sense of relieve or my stress level dropping to zero. It’s more of a sense of general calmness about the whole topic. You stop doing that thing where you type an „f“ into your adress bar, go one down, hit enter and immediately regret doing it, because someone dumps a huge bucket of acid into your eyes. It’s a bit like stopping to smoke. It’s just gone and then you move on with your life. There is the occasional look back in disgust. You DO feel sorry about your peers being trapped. But there’s nothing you can’t do and you dont want to come off as this dick who is so much better the them because you jumped the shark. Shit, some people even love facebook. And it’s right and good for them, but it just wasn’t for me.
It’s probably all part of the whole re-evaluation of values in my life I’ve got going on right now, but that will be another post. If it helps you make a decision, here’s the link to the delete page. Good luck!
