One thing that really annoys my friends is that I'm not on Facebook. Stop it friends, you know it annoys you because you have to email me photos. Oh, and I expect personal updates on your lives. Yep. I make you email me, and call me, and text me when things are happening in your life. So yeah, I'm that annoying person who doesn't let you just put in on your Timeline (what the heck is that anyways?) and let me read it in real time. Oh, you don't want to be that type of friend who gives me actual updates on your life? Well, then chances are you weren't really a "friend" to begin with.
That is one of the top reasons I quit Facebook. Relationships felt too superficial. I was also tired of that onslaught of requests to friend people I went to high school with (did we ever talk?) or to friend people I met at a wedding/party/social event. Work people, yeah I won't friend you. There's a balance there that must be kept and if I have to spend all day with you, I don't need you reading my snark on the interweb after hours. As I started deleting these so-called friends from my friend list, Facebook in their infinite wisdom would suggest to the person that we should be friends and they would resubmit a request (or 2 or 3) that I would decline. Then Facebook made one of their brilliant security changes that ended up making one of my albums I had marked private to public. I missed that one. Then some less than stellar human being stole my pictures and put them on her own wall, claiming my niece as part of her family. Yeah, that was my breaking point. So I deactivated my account. It was almost 2 years ago when I pulled the plug. Have I missed it? Occasionally because there are some people who fall into the real friend category who refuse to email me pictures. I still love them, I just wouldn't recognize their children. :-) But I don't miss the drama, I don't miss the time it sucked out of my day, and I don't miss how everything revolved around it. Because really, is Facebook what it is really about? I don't think so. I have friends who rely on Facebook because they have moved around a lot and have several good friends interspersed throughout the world they keep in touch with. I don't judge you if it works for you and it is your lifeline to keep in contact with people who are special to you. It just wasn't for me.
Now that I am not on Facebook, I have scheduled phone calls with AW, she emails me pictures and monologues about her travels and inner thoughts (rather than brief note on my wall or a truncated Facebook message.) SS and I talk regularly. My friend TH posts pictures of her newly adopted little one on Twitter or her blog so I can keep up with his progress. She gives me more grief than others because I make her do this extra step, but she rolls with it. DW, yeah, I email her annoying questions until she writes a blog update for me to read about her kiddos. P.S. come October wait until you see her oldest in the most beautiful princess dress preceding me down the aisle! All those other people (I think I was hovering around +/- 200 when I pulled the plug) just weren't that important.
I've noticed a trend now where people are starting to question if Facebook is healthy for their lives as well. The following two articles made it across my computer screen yesterday, and while I didn't delete Facebook for all the reasons they did, or go to the effort to make sure their account was wiped as clean as the one guy did, they put their reasons into a much more articulate form than I ever could. So, if you want more articulated thoughts on why I say no to this online tool, you can check out these articles as well.
P.S. Occasionally I say I'm going to create a super-secret-no-one-can-find-me-I-have-to-find-you account, but let's face it. It's probably not going to happen because Facebook will change a setting, then everyone will find me, and then what was the point. I'm also not going to create one with my dog's name so I can have one people can't find. I know a girl who did that. Works for her, not for me. Sorry, I don't want my identity tied to that of my canine.
P.P.S. Proctor & Gamble, Nestle, Kimberly-Clark, etc....I don't "like" any of your products enough to need you stalking my life either just so I can have a coupon. Sorry, go back to the old form of providing coupons and stay out of my personal life.
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