Facebook et al. Quitting ain’t easy.

 

I used to like facebook. Sharing pictures of friends, holidays, and just random crazy stuff you see along the way of living life. It was good. Keeping tabs on people you haven’t seen in a while through Facebook was a good way to keep communicating with long lost friends.

That was years ago, in what looks like an eternity ago.

I hate facebook. I hate looking at it, I hate having to react to it, I hate the behemoth my friends list has become – meaning that a lot of important posts get buried by the unstoppable avalanche of crap people post to their wall.

Sometimes, I go into abortion mode – cutting away every non-essential detail of my facebook page. Be it pages I liked, ‘friends’ I don’t really know or want to know, or groups I was subscribed to.

Why not delete your facebook entirely, then? Good question, which I’ve been asking myself a lot as well. Why wouldn’t I? Well, Facebook is so greatly integrated into our lives, it is part of your existence. It is proof you exist on the digital world, meaning there’s a big chance you exist in the real world.

Scenario: You meet a guy or a girl in a bar, but before you can get her number or anything but her name, you lose contact. Once home, you’ll try to find him/her on facebook. Add him or her as a friend, and there’s a possibility this initial contact can be extended with who knows what. If, in this scenario, one of the persons involved doesn’t have facebook, you’re screwed. That’s it. No further contact is possible.

This is why I admire the people who’ve never had a facebook-account. Once you’re in, you can’t get back. Abstinence, in this case, really is the answer. Yeah, it’s a given that you miss out on some contact, presumably within your group of friends (i.e. “let’s go to the bar on friday” resulting in “did anyone invite Felix?” – “oh shit, I forgot he didn’t have a facebook”), but let’s face it: how much of this hasn’t been replaced by other social media like whatsapp?

Another point: has anyone really come into contact with someone you met a decade ago, either in school or on the soccer team, with whom you’ve lost contact and rebuilt those bonds lost with time? I know I haven’t. There’s a reason why those friendships didn’t last: they where shit anyway. If it was a *real* friendship, contact wouldn’t be lost anyway.

I just read a post on TheVerge.com about facebook. In it, they state that Facebook is no longer the top social media site for 15-25 year olds. I am, with 22 years on my curriculum vitae, within that age group. In it, they pose multiple reasons as to why facebook is losing popularity. One of those reasons they state is that “people don’t like to brag anymore”, instead “choosing for social media websites like Instagram”. Can anyone spot the irony in this statement? All you ever do on instagram is brag about things you see, have or do. Be it your dinner, your earrings or some dipshit club you went to.

Seriously, Instagram is just as awful. For 150 years, people, intelligent people, have been trying to improve camera-technology. Some fucking app comes along, and we’re set back 100 years due to some Justin Bieber loving teens thinking it is cool to post pictures in sepia. Fuck that shit.

Another quote from the article: “”I think that kids just don’t care anymore. […] They have gotten over the idea of knowing everybody’s life and everybody knowing their lives!” Even though I don’t really like being called a kid anymore, this one is spot on. For me, anyway. However, there are some people taking it to the next level with the above mentioned Instagram or other sites like tumblr. I don’t think you can statistically prove the above statement, because in general it is  just not true.

Another feature that used to be kinda helpful in facebook, was to form your own groups. I’ve formed multiple groups with people, most of them related to my classes. They where useful, yes, in sharing documents, links, etc. However, I’ve since moved into the cloud using Google Drive, and I have to see, it is a very superior experience. Combine it with a direct communication via whatsapp, and it’s smooth sailing from there. For our most recent project, we did form a facebook group. It has amassed 2 (!) posts in a month.

I’m not on instagram, tumblr, or anything of the kind. The reason being that I will start to hate it just as much as I hate facebook now. Facebook is the social norm. God, I hope it fades away.

/rant.

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