When I signed up for Facebook, it was for university students only. You had to confirm your official uni email address to get on. You could write a short note about what you were doing (twitter-style), or you could write longer "notes" or even share a few pictures. There were the basics of a profile structure, but no "likes" or anything like that.
They keep adding features to Facebook. They sure as hell don't check with the users to see if we want them first, because they don't care. Most people will just do whatever they're told by the Facebook machine, even if they take a few minutes to complain about it when it first happens. Nowadays you have to manage your privacy settings on many levels. You have to continually check to make sure you're not being tagged in photos your grandparents might see. You have to manage a flood of unwanted game spam and anyone, at any time, can invite you to their "event." I have NO INTEREST in any of this garbage. So you're telling me that it's not acceptable to simply keep using the features you want and ignore the ones you never asked for and vocally dislike. You either use ALL of it, ALL the time, or you quit Facebook altogether?
Well, I have decided to quit. This is insanity. I've written up a whole essay about why, and I'm going to post it on my tumblr. Then I'm going to post an announcement on Facebook informing my friends and family that I'm quitting and providing a list of alternative ways to keep in touch with me. I'll post them here first and if anyone has any last comments, suggestions, ideas, etc., feel free to post them here.
It wasn't long ago that you had to be an active University student with an official email address in order to have a Facebook account. Before that, there was MySpace, in all its embedded-MIDI and migraine-inducing-animated-background glory. And before MySpace? How many of you even remember that far back? Before MySpace there was LiveJournal, and before that, GeoCities. If you wanted a web page with all your information on it, you had to learn HTML.
And before that? Well, that was before personal internet use was widespread. Back when telephones and letters were the only way to keep in touch with someone far away.
I remember growing up without a cell phone (or even a cordless one - remember the kitchen phone?). In fact, when I got my first cell phone at age 18, an enormous blocky thing that clipped onto my belt, my mother threw a fit and said I was too young for one of those things. Nowadays parents have a panic attack if their 5-year-old child leaves home without their own little personal camera phone. After all, what if the kid gets lost? Everyone knows that before cell phones, a lost child never found their way home again. Right? How did we ever survive without them?
I'm not stupid, of course. I know that I can't stop this terrifying change that's come over the modern world. The effects of it are already becoming known and researched: Impaired social skills. Increased social anxiety. Reduced memory capacity. Poor problem-solving and planning skills. These things are going to continue to happen.
Something is being permanently lost here. I cannot stop it from happening, but I sure as hell can opt out. By making my social life a little less convenient, I will force myself to practice skills I would otherwise lose, and avoid getting caught in the trap of Facebook obsession.
Here are a few of the things about Facebook that I can no longer abide, and have influenced my decision to leave:
1. Facebook Petitions and Political Declarations. Every time there is a tragedy, or a hot political issue up for debate, the petitions start. "Help us get 1,000,000 likes" to stop the educational-budget-cutting bill. Change your profile picture to show you support gay marriage. Pass on this inspirational picture with a (probably fictitious) touching story - unless, of course, you're some kind of asshole who hates happiness and love. Click LIKE if you think rape is bad. SHARE this if you want to find a cure for cancer.
These things aren't doing any active harm in and of themselves, but they do have a very real and very dangerous psychological effect on people: they make them think they have done something. It used to be that you donated money to help the earthquake victims, or else you weren't helping. Now we have somehow gotten to a point where people think that posting "I'm keeping them in my thoughts and prayers" is enough to make a difference. It satisfies the social pressure to help others and make a difference in the world - all without actually changing or helping ANYTHING.
2. Constant Too-Much-Information Updates. There is something about Facebook that makes people want to share every little detail of their lives. Not only does the web site suggest to you (by directly asking you) that everyone wants to know what you had for dinner and whether your boyfriend bothered to take out the trash tonight, but also that you are deserving of attention for it.
It used to be that if you wanted attention, you had to do something to deserve it. Furthermore, you grew up knowing that you had to EARN the attention you wanted. Learn a skill. Write a book. Tell funny jokes. Or even just be a good friend. Now, everyone is being trained by this web site (and others like it) to believe that they should be showered with attention and support for every little thing they do. They're spending more time putting spotlights on their mundane daily activities like making breakfast and ironing the laundry, and less finding more interesting and noteworthy things to do. If no one clicks "like" on your complaint about how bad your period is, then it must be because your friends are a bunch of jerks, and not because no one in the world wants to hear about your period.
This has a side effect of making people click "like" more often - because they don't want their friends to think they're a bunch of jerks. The fact that clicking a button on a web site probably requires the least possible expenditure of energy you can produce while still being conscious, combined with the fact that everyone is doing it all the time whether they mean it or not (especially since it relieves them of the responsibility of actually saying something about the topic at hand) has rendered any display of approval on Facebook absolutely meaningless. It's like how Americans are always asking "how are you?" as a greeting, even though they really couldn't care less how you are. If you don't ask, you're rude, but the question itself doesn't even mean anything anymore.
3. Everyone Is a Spambot. Remember how irritating it was when advertisers discovered they could send out mass advertisements to people who unwittingly shared their email address with the wrong web site, and spam messages were born? We've all deleted our share of ads for penis enlargement pills and requests for aid from the prince of Nigeria. Well, I hate to break it to you, Facebook friends, but you have all become Nigerian princes.
Almost everyone plays at least one Facebook game. These games are all about making money through microtransactions and advertisements. The brilliant part of it is that they don't have to do the advertising, because they make the players do it. In order to progress in the game, you have to spam all your friends with requests for help, effectively advertising the game to them, even if they have blocked the app on their account. So many people end up advertising these games to hundreds of their friends that the game makers earn loads of money, even though only a tiny fraction of their users actually pay for things. It's like how they get beloved Hollywood celebrities and sports stars to endorse products for TV commercials, except it's your FRIENDS endorsing the product. Surely their opinion must mean something to you.
Aside from games, I get spam in the form of Event invitations. I have somehow ended up with quite a few "friends" who work in the music industry, and I must get at least 5 event invitations a week from these people, even though I have never been to one of their parties. On top of that, there are always the attention-seeking "friends" you haven't seen or spoken to in years who will send every event invitation to their entire friends list, without even checking whether people live in the same country as them.
The very worst part of the event invite spam is that everyone is apparently expected to dig through it constantly. I stopped reading event invitations ages ago, because if someone really wants me to do something with them, they're in my physical vicinity anyway, almost certainly have my phone number and email, and will get in touch with me some other way if I don't respond to their invite. And yet I have actually experienced situations where, although I had not noticed or responded to an invitation, everyone at the party expected that I had seen it and would be coming. No one at the party bothered to call or write me to check that I would be there, and I got angry messages the next day demanding to know why I hadn't shown up. To me, this is akin to disguising an email as a spam message, then getting angry at your friend for not digging through their spam filter to find and read it, just in case.
4. Privacy. I don't think this should come as a surprise to anyone. Facebook doesn't have the slightest interest in privacy. It has an interest in getting ahold of your personal information using whatever means it can think of, and selling it to advertisers and the NSA. Something is wrong when Facebook tells me that in order to keep my personal information safe, I need to provide more personal information, like another email address and a phone number. And it's fair enough that if you post something on a web site, you should expect that it will no longer be private, just like if you have a phone conversation on a busy street, you can bet people will overhear it. But I don't even have to share personal information on Facebook, because my "friends" do it for me. I've been tagged in embarrassing pictures that I never imagined would find their way onto the internet. I've had family members repeatedly try to add me to their family tree for all the world to see. Facebook is constantly "suggesting" things for me to like, and my friends are helping them out by sending me "invitations" to like their pages. And herein lies another potential source of guilt: if you DON'T "like" their page, it must mean you are not a good friend, and you end up getting in real-life trouble just for wanting to avoid posting personal things on the internet.
5. Losing Real Friendships. I have been unfriended, not only on Facebook, but disconnected from in real life, over the opinion content of a single Facebook message. This happened with a person who I had known for nearly a year. We had had conversations and discussions, shared photos and gone to parties together. I posted one thing that this person disagreed with, and they blocked me out of their life forever.
I swear, I remember a time when you could be friends with someone, even very close friends, without agreeing on every single little detail of the universe. You would have conversations, debates, even arguments, but in the end, you were friends, and that one political issue did not make or break your entire relationship. Those days are drawing to a close, and it breaks my heart to realize it. Every time I see posts like "I know which of my friends will share this image, because they are my REAL friends," I want to either cry or punch the computer. I have an important announcement to make to everyone young enough to have grown up with Facebook:
Your REAL friends are the ones who, when you say something stupid or misinformed, will tell you you are wrong. They are the ones who challenge you, force you to consider your opinions, and help you grow and learn and improve yourself. You NEED those people in your life.
Surrounding yourself, in real life or online, with only people who agree with you is nothing more than social masturbation. It removes a critical tool in your life and stunts your growth and development as a person. It turns you into an entitled, narcissistic, irritating person. How much do you respect politicians, business leaders, and celebrities who only surround themselves with yes-men? Imagine a spoiled 5-year-old in an adult body. If you refuse to be friends with anyone who disagrees with you: THAT IS YOU.
But it will not be me. I am fortunate enough to have plenty of real friends. They irritate the hell out of me, criticize and argue with me on a regular basis and constantly challenge my opinions and life decisions. They also help me move, lend me money when I'm broke, give me advice on my major life decisions, and let me cry on their shoulder when I need it. And not one of these activities requires the use of Facebook.
In short: I hope most of you will understand why I'm leaving Facebook, and put in that little bit of extra effort to send me an email or text message so we can keep in touch. Enjoy your social network, and please, for the love of all that is good in the world, do not let it take over your lives.
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Topic: Modern Social Skills Questions (Read 3254 times)