Facebook Suicide

October 2007, a day I remember like yesterday, the day I joined Facebook. I can’t really remember anymore why I joined FB initially, most of friends weren’t even on there and my work colleagues I saw everyday anyway. I guess it must have been the social pressure to do what everyone else was doing and that all the latest things and events are announced via Facebook.

Today everyone is on there; even most of my family members have a page. I found that I got used to the fact that everything took place there, all important announcements were made via status and you are not officially together if it is not Facebook official.

For years I found the site useful, knew always what had been happing in people’s life, wether I wanted to know or not.

I was one of those users that actually only added people as friends that I had met at least once in my life, with maybe 2 or 3 exceptions. I accumulated around 300 Facebook ‘friends’, hundreds of pictures and random status updates. I saw Facebook changing from a simple page to today’s timeline.

Last week I made the decision that Facebook is no longer of use for me and requested the download for my information. The download was useless and didn’t even give me what I had expected. Next I began to delete everything I had on there, pictures, links, statuses and comments. Facebook is clever and certainly didn’t make it easy. I was a bit nostalgic while doing this, great memories came up that I made during the last 5 years. Facebook memories! There are tools online you can download that apparently make it easier to delete everything, but it didn’t really work for me.

Also I tried to send every one of my connected friends a message to let them know I will only be available via phone and email and remove myself from Facebook. That as well was not possible due to the settings in Facebook. After I realized that it would take me ages I wanted to message only those people I definitely wanted to stay in touch with (50 out of 300!), but that as well seemed to be a lot of effort, so instead I posted for the last time a status update with this information, of which probably half of the people didn’t even get to see it.

As soon as I had made the announcement, the first things people were asking

1. WHY?
2.  Are you ok?

Let me answer the first question why I deleted myself of Facebook:

-     Facebook Friends are most of the time not your friends, they are acquaintances with whom you maybe speak once or twice a year if even. You will not ask them for help when you need it, you will call you real friends, then ones you trust and know will help you no matter what because  you do the same for them. Your real friends are with you, from far away or next door, they have your number and rather call you then chatting on Facebook (for me anyway). I did add a few old school mates, most of them were just curious what became of you, less interested to actually stay in touch. I learned that people I didn’t like in the past, I don’t get to like them just because they are now connected on FB.

-       Because I read every day what people are doing I actually lost touch with them. Why talking to people if you know anyway whats been happening. I called less and had less real conversations.

-     The constantly updated security settings started to confuse me and suddenly friends of friends could see my pictures when a friend commented on them. I could not figure out how to change that and to be honest couldn’t be bothered with it.

-     During the last year 2 of my friends died and their profile had been up forever, probably still are. Of course I am not thinking that anything will happen to me, but if, my page as well will be there present while I am already gone

-     People started to judge my life based on Facebook facts and not actually what I was doing in reality. Of course I only put interesting things in there, who cares what I had for lunch every day.

-     Some of my friends started to argue with me why Facebook is not ‘bad’. I never said it is bad and I really have nothing against it, it is just no longer useful for me. People I added for the purpose of staying in touch with when I for example met them during my travels and plan to visit their country and of course hoping for a cheap place to stay is a good thing. But usually they didn’t have time, were traveling themselves or just didn’t reply. So there is really no point for me being on there.

-     If you really want to stay in touch, you will, with or without Facebook! If you want that I take part in your event you will send me an email and not hoping I respond to an Event invite on Facebook (most of the ‘attending’ guests didn’t show up anyway).

I will return to the original way of communicating and sharing via email and picture sites. The second question if I am ok can only be answered with: Are you serious? Why wouldn’t I be? Instead of wasting my time talking people and their pointless comments (not everything of course) I started again following what I like to follow, talking to people I like to talk and be more active. I started to have contact again with people. And now after a week of being off Facebook I certainly can confirm it is a relieve for me and I will not be part of the social website again. I never used Twitter or other media social websites any way that much. The only site I still will be using regularly is my blog. Bad enough that I have now a smart phone since last Saturday, but having a map on my fingertip finally convinced me that they are indeed useful.

For everyone else that is planning or thinking of leaving Facebook for good, it is really just a habit you need to get rid of, once that’s done, it is done. Good luck :)

Read you soon again with some travel stories again!