“I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!”

Thursday  in the early evening  Mystie

I wish to make an ANNOUNCEMENT. [...] I regret to announce that — though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you — this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!

I have closed my Facebook account. It is something I decided I would do over a month ago, and in thinking about it for that time I have seen no reason to change my mind.

This post is meant to explain myself, and why I no longer want to be on Facebook, but it is in no way meant to try to convince anyone else to get off. There are valid reasons for and uses of Facebook; it’s fun, it’s nice to see what childhood and long-distance friends are up to, and I enjoyed writing sometimes clever one-sentence status statements. My own personal goal was to always use an action verb and never a linking verb, and I had a good time composing those sentences. So, this is not a rant against Facebook nor meant to be a persuasive argument, but merely an explanatory statement of my own choice.

1. The primary reason I decided to quit was the way in which I used it. With the computer in the kitchen, I frequently turn to the screen whenever I really should be washing the dishes or starting dinner. Facebook, obviously, is not at fault for this, nor is it the only outlet for procrastination. However, I don’t get email often enough to provide the distraction I need, and I purposefully keep my Google Reader subscriptions few and carefully chosen so that I don’t have a constant stream of distraction available. Facebook, however, is a constant and ever-changing source of distraction — and I never even once played any of the games available! But I could still spend plenty of time scrolling through people’s status updates, notes, and pictures.

2. My second reason rivals the first for primacy. I have small children who watch and mimic my every action and attitude. On top of that, I now have a child that can and does read everything, including sidebar ads. When I noticed my boys automatically stop in front of the screen and glaze over, staring at it, every time they passed through the kitchen, I had to confront just who modeled that behavior for them. Again, this is not particularly a problem with Facebook, but a problem with my usage of the computer in general. I need to change my computer habits, and eliminating the Facebook temptation is one of my strategies.

Ok, now for the reasons that Facebook in particular is the temptation to get whacked:

3. I love the English language. I know that means people put me in the “snob” category, but it’s still true (loving the language, not being a snob — I hope). But, honestly, I wince whenever I encounter normal, average people using the language. And, although I never did assume so, homeschooling v. public schooling (and not even having had an excellent writing class, *cough*), is an indicator of better Facebook composition. I don’t hold it against most people, I don’t roll my eyes or think badly of you if you make a grammar mistake. I still make plenty of punctuation and grammar mistakes myself. My pain stems from the fact that people aren’t taught better, but are taught that it’s mostly random, meaningless rules. My pain stems from the fact that so very, very few care if they misuse English. Gentle joking about using the wrong word, and therefore making a statement that makes no sense, is not tolerated or acceptable. Anyone can string words together, and it is not the author’s responsibility to make sense, but the reader’s responsibility to decipher what the author intended to communicate (as opposed to read what he actually wrote). Ok, so here’s my one rant: If you aren’t going to bother to put your words together in a way that objectively makes sense, you should not write. Period. No more texting for you.

4. Ok, this one I don’t necessarily want to develop, but it’s true. I would prefer to think well of the people I know, and what some say on Facebook makes that very difficult. That sounds terrible, but it’s true. However, this one is one problem that Facebook itself exacerbates. In a real-live social interaction with any of my Facebook friends, we could have meaningful conversation. Facebook’s format and nature encourages shallow interaction, frivolous statements, stupid pictures, flattery, memery, and inanity masquerading as profundity. I’d rather have a normal conversation with you than know all the dumb movies you have seen or read your favorite movie quotes.

5. The quizzes, surveys, memes, fan clubs, etc. are all silly and pointless. Anyone can write them, so they don’t mean anything at all. Again, going back to point #3, most of them are not written well, either. Yet, tons of people take them or use them, and this exacerbates my point #4. Yes, I would rather not know what color epitomizes your personality, accompanied by some paragraph (written by the test author) that contains misspellings and sentence fragments. I would rather not know what you are looking for or what you gifted to someone in Farmville. Again with point #4, you’re making it hard, here, people. As Matt quipped a few weeks ago: “Facebook: for a life more trivial.”

6. When I asked myself what the draw to Facebook was for me, my honest answer was that it is my connection to the gossip chain. Now, it’s people talking about themselves, not second-hand information, but it is that need-to-know, don’t-want-to-miss-out-on-news-that-is-none-of-my-business that was the strongest tie keeping me on Facebook. And it’s easy, non-committal communication. I can keep up with people without actually having to interact with them, without even being seen or noticed. “I might miss knowing something everyone else knows” was the only real reason I could come up with to not quit Facebook. And I decided that was ultimately another reason to get off rather than a reason to stay on.

Now, really, another valid solution would be to simply limit my use, to only see status updates in my RSS feed and not actually get on the Facebook site, to pare down my friends list, and not waste time browsing people’s pictures. But, I decided I’d rather make a clean cut.

So, Matt has bets on when I join up with Twitter instead, but my intention is to be more purposeful in my computer usage and better manage my time and energy. Right now that means weeding through my RSS feed again and getting off Facebook. And I will become even more of a social conversation difficulty — I will now not be able to chat about the latest on Facebook, in addition to not being able to talk about the latest tv show, movie, or news crisis. Oh well.

“[S]he’s mad. I always said so,” was probably the most popular comment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Lady of the House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.