Early [Facebook] holiday
It has been done! Logged out of Facebook. Deleted the Facebook app from my iPod Touch. No more Facebook, until October.
Back in my days I did most of my communication via IRC with friends. Then MSN became the way to stay in touch and easily send each other messages. I refused at first, but caved in. Same happened with Facebook. I tried to stay away, but curiosity got the better of me. Not sure how many friends I have on Facebook. How many of them do I almost have daily communication with? Probably could count them on two hands.
IRC had one purpose. Talk, chat, communicate. What is done on Facebook? More like putting your life on display in hope to get more friends and all of them clicking the like button to boost your ego. Don’t forget the two most important ways to communicate on Facebook:
- Don’t accept opinions or views of those who challenge your views and opinions.
- Post vague passive-aggressive status updates.
Facebook, the poster perfect example of how to act like you like everyone when you truly hate them. Never experienced so much arse-kissing and fakery in my life. Of course, you can and should be selective of who your are friends with on there, but how do you explain that to a family member or a friend of a friend?
“You see, I just have to be honest with you, I hate your guts! You are stupid and I find you boring. And you piss me off!”
Honesty can only take you so far. It is as if Facebook has been created in a way that it will make it awkward to unfriend someone. Almost like it will instantly create this difficult situation between you, that person and your fellow friends and/or family members.
To me, communication online has always been about content. Which is why I prefer Twitter and Shortmail. Also because I hate verbosity. I prefer brevity. Sticking to the topic and being informative. Stay focused! Stop with that meandering talk.
As of now, the only way you can reach me is via Twitter, Diaspora or Shortmail — and this blog.
It will also give me a chance to see how valuable Facebook is to me. Is it really such a great tool as everyone claims it to be? Most importantly, it will also show how important I am to my friends on Facebook. If hardly any of them stay in touch with me during this month long Facebook holiday, it will be very easy to download my archive, delete everything and then delete my account.
I tried to find the original quote, but I saw the most perfect description of Facebook:
Facebook has become like Microsoft Office, you should use it because everyone else does.
[not verbatim]
Just checked out Diaspora, seems pretty nice.. Might even try and fix issues since they run on Ruby :) Would you mind sending me an invite, if you have any. I already signed up on the list, but just read somewhere that people are given invites as well.
And I agree with you on FB, I’m cleaning my friends list weekly. Just defriending people I don’t keep in daily contact with. Too bad people sometimes misread that action like you hate em yeh, but ah well.. And yush, still miss the times on IRC as well but dunno. Times change I guess.
Just sent you an invite. :)
Not sure if there is a limit to it, but I’ll keep sending out to friends until they stop me.
Yeah. Been too many times where I want a healthy and friendly debate about a topic, but because I look at it from a different POV I’m apparently wrong or a very mean person.
The biggest loss with IRC and IM is that you must be part of that certain server. Which is a bit odd with email, that is kind of decentralised, in a way, that you can send messages to any “network”. But I guess email isn’t public enough for some. ;)