A few days ago I decided to leave Facebook and not tell anyone (just in case I decided to go back). After a week of living a Facebook-less life, I believe I made a good decision.
Since I’ve gotten so many messages asking if I’m still alive because I haven’t posted anything recently, I thought I’d share here my motives and thoughts here for everyone.
Reason #1: The tool became a burden
Until recently, Facebook was a useful tool to communicate thoughts, keep up-to-date with friends all over the world in a centralized way, and develop my professional career as an online marketing expert.
But then it all went down the toilet. People started taking for granted that anything they write on Facebook will be read. They started assuming I saw their invitation to their parties and therefore I am showing up. They decided to tag me in pictures I'm not even in. And apparently it was my responsibility to answer to every single message they write to me.
Facebook became a big responsibility and a burden. I had to actively dedicate time to keep up instead of it being at my disposal and make my life easier. I was no longer using Facebook, it was using me.
Reason #2: Facebook is really good at marketing
The same way the tobacco companies tricked our parents into thinking smoking was cool, Facebook has tricked us into thinking that having 1000 friends in their site is a cool replacement of the 10 friends you have in real life.
And I fell for that.
I’ve been lulled into the false sense of security that tells me that just because I can instantly communicate with everyone in my life, I don’t need to do it right now. And then not talking to someone important right now, even though I have the chance, has turned into not talking to that person for 6 months. And then a year. And then two years.
And even when I did, Facebook became a place where messages were so light and meaningless that it transformed into a black hole where plans are made but never acted upon.
Reason #2: Friends and family are becoming cheap entertainment
Facebook has become much less about communicating meaningfully with people and much more about knowing what everyone is doing. Don’t get me wrong, I liked scrolling down my news feed and seeing how everyone I know is and what a beautiful day it is in California or how that party last night was (you should delete those pictures, by the way). The idea of the Facebook status has become such a mundane commodity, that few people use it as something meaningful. What you are actually telling Facebook you’re doing doesn’t portrait real feelings and how you really are.
The fact is, I like having friends because of their humanity. I care about the person, not the bits of information they send to the Cloud. Facebook is becoming extremely adept at removing people's humanity. Friends and family are becoming cheap entertainment.
Reason #3: Attention is a currency
Everything I do is online. I live what I call a cyborg-life. I leverage my humanity by embracing technology as an extension of my senses, and therefore I have “superpowers” (enhanced sense of orientation through GPS, some sort of telepathy with messages, omnipresence through social media, super memory through notes and pictures, etc. I’ll write more about this soon).
The problem with this lifestyle lies in the noise. The Net is a truly democratic place where anyone can add value or their 2 cents about anything. Sadly, humans are selfish and, therefore, when people realize they can get significant personal gain from adding noise there’s a lot of useless crap flying around the Internet. And Facebook is just about the biggest noise machine there currently is. See, Facebook’s business model is designing everything they do to make you go back to their site. More visits, more ads shown, more cashola for the Zuck.
I realize this statement is unfair to those who innocently believe that sharing that it’s snowing in Whofreakingcaresville is actually of value to someone in the other side of the world. The same way I understand that my dog eating my shoes is not an act of war, but a (in his mind) harmless game. It's all with good intentions, but it affects things anyways. But I see that people won’t change, so I might as well change the way I interact with them.
Conclusion
It’s about being okay with less. With less information and less distraction. About eliminating the low-impact streams of information in favor of making time for what truly matters.
I won’t be checking Facebook status or updating my own anymore, but I will be calling people more and grabbing more beers. I will embrace private messages and email (juanchivales@facebook.com and jm.vales@gmail.com) as a way to keep in touch with people far away and even eliminate people I don’t have a relationship with anymore. I mean, why would I want to see pictures of their parties or know what they had for breakfast if I haven’t talked to them in years?
It’s all about reducing quantity in favor of quality. It’s about not living in a place filled with meaningless noise.
See you on the other side.
J.
