This will be my first post since leaving Facebook (this time…). It will be interesting to see what the traffic will look like. I will post this on Twitter, but most people I personally know don’t use Twitter.
I close both accounts on Saturday night. They both made it difficult to quit. You can’t kill your account outright. It sits in limbo waiting for your return. It is like reincarnation, but you just return to your body a few minutes later each time you are reborn.
For the first few days, I felt like something was missing. I felt grief. I’m not sure I was unhappy that I couldn’t check Facebook or Instagram, but I didn’t feel like I was missing anyone’s particular posts, but I did miss the distraction of scrolling.
I get a little of it with Twitter and Reddit, my last vices. I found myself reading more articles and finishing the articles more. I was delving more into subjects. I also was grabbing for books and magazines more than my phone, which was nice.
The noise of everything became a little more softened. Facebook was like being yelled at right in the year while not having Facebook is like looking right in the screamer’s face.
The point is, I am able to handle the news better. The news is still the news, but it is self-propelled by a single propeller engine instead of a thousand jet engines.
I have read that even though I don’t have my Facebook account open, they still are following my forays into the internet, so maybe it is a waste of time since the reason I quit was more political than for mental health reasons.
I wished I had written my last blog so well that it became viral and everyone deleted their Facebook and Instagram and all of the sudden advertisers were scrambling to find where everyone was going, but they were just looking at other stuff that doesn’t have advertising and people started buying things on the merits of the company and its products instead of the hype and abilities of the advertisements that trap you in the blue and white corners of the internet and then the entire system became crippled and a newer better society rises from the ashes where we all love each other and then they build statues of me, the one who started the dismantling of late-stage capitalism.
No such luck. The show will just go on. The world stays the same. I am a small-time blogger with no ability to write that kind of blog to make that kind of change. I used to dream about stepping to a podium and giving some riveting speech that unbuckles eons of unjust behaviors and makes a better world.
Most of the time I am grateful that I don’t have that kind of responsibility. Besides, different voices are needed now anyway.
I hope you are all well, and if there’s anything I’m missing, let me know if you want!
I left Facebook because your blog post made a lot of sense to me. Then a friend of mine left because I did. It’s not the ground swell you were hoping for, but it’s something. Your blog made me laugh. Our brains want to make us ridiculous, overblown heroes and villains. It’s nice to see something in writing that’s a little bit like how far I’ll extrapolate anything.
I’m glad I got your blog post. I was sure I messed up signing up to get it.
I think it’s like recycling, it takes a few pioneers and then bam, one day everyone is doing it (or not doing it in this case). Facebook is like RJ Ronalds Tobacco, big hit in the beginning, but had no regard for people and how seriously they effect them.
My reply disappeared so here it is again. I need to 86 my phone except for phone calls. My to be read pile keeps growing. Recently began volunteering at a sanctuary for animals and the one hour drive there and back allows for good listening to audio books. Try, Barry Lopez new book Horizon. It will take you to far off places from your front porch. Keep up your great writing.