Lose The Face

What’s the HOTTEST NEW MILLENNIAL TREND IN SOCIAL MEDIA????

Deleting Facebook.

…maybe.

At a dinner get-together, a friend of ours mentioned that she made a bold move recently: she deleted the Facebook app off her phone. She said that it was a total time-suck, and her least favorite social network, and deleting it off of her phone meant she was less likely to thumb her way over to it and get pulled in.

Yesterday, my boyfriend confessed that he, too, deleted the app from his phone! Inspired by our dinner party conversation!

After the election, I closed the open Facebook tab on the laptop I use and have rarely opened it since. This means that, if you had a birthday in the past month, I’M SORRY, I STILL LOVE YOU, even though I didn’t post on your wall on the anniversary of your birth. Phew.

The primary reason for this was that it was just too painful to look at it. Thanks to Facebook throwing the chronological timeline out the window, I was still seeing people’s #Ivoted and #ImWithHer posts from election day WELL AFTER our hopes had been pronounced dead. Way to rub salt in that wound, Facebook.

The amount of anger and hopelessness was doing my head in, as someone who is already struggling, I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk that I’d navigate over to the tab and find myself hours later, curled in fetal position on the couch, drinking heavily and worrying that we were all doomed, doomed! Which of course we are, but I don’t need Facebook to remind me & make it that much worse.

What is Facebook’s problem, anyway? Facebook started off as a MySpace for college students. It was new and interesting, kind of a precursor of Twitter and a little bit of a message board thrown in.

Now, I think of Facebook as a Tumblr/Pinterest hybrid. Nobody really posts original content or communication, it’s all #reposts and #reblogs of other things. And then, on top of that, Facebook suffers from the notion that it can do All The Things. There’s a corner of Facebook for selling things, like Craigslist. There’s a corner of Facebook to send people money, like PayPal or it’s non-evil counterpart, Venmo. There’s Facebook GAMES. There’s a new area just for videos, like YouTube. Facebook is trying to do everything, and as the saying goes, if you try to do everything, you’ll accomplish nothing. 

Nothing, aside from being a total time-suck that I just wasted 11 minutes rage-scrolling through.Eleven minutes I should have spent walking to CVS to pick up my prescriptions, or washing the dishes from last night, or doing literally anything else. 

Besides that, I have TWO FACEBOOK APPS on my phone, taking up precious space that could be put to better use taking photos of strangers’ dogs on the subway, downloading Beatles albums in iTunes, or journaling my way out of those depression spirals on my CBT therapist-recommended app.

So, if you don’t hear from me on Facebook as often, this is why. I’ve freed myself from Zuckerberg’s shackles. Now I have more time to waste on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat (username meghansara obvs). If you want to get in touch with me, you know where to find me.

Oh, and, Happy Birthday, in case I miss it.


Comments

4 responses to “Lose The Face”

  1. I can’t stand Facebook either. I felt like the election really tore people a part and Facebook played a huge part in that. I also can’t stand how everyone and their mother is on it. Yea I like being able to keep in touch with family, but then my daughter posted a picture that she looked really pretty in and my ex mother in law tagged me and said I shouldn’t be posting pictures of her like that on facebook because she is too pretty. Mind you I can’t stand this woman. Luckily her daughter’s came to the rescue. I only go on now for a Star Wars group I’m a part of or to sell stuff, but I also get sucked in and 30 minutes later I’m like ‘where did my life go?’ I hate Facebook. It also gives people who are normally very nice in person a way to act like Trolls and bullies. Which is really sad.

    1. I’m so sorry your ex-family uses Facebook to get under your skin! It is SUCH a time-suck. Twenty minutes will go by because I’m just watching those dumb “SHARE IF YOU AGREE!” videos and most of the time, I don’t feel strongly enough about agreeing to share, you know what I mean? And you’re so right about the way Facebook emboldens perfectly decent people to be rude and pick fights. I’ll meet people in real life and then become their Facebook friend and be SHOCKED at how aggressive they are on Facebook.

  2. I did the same thing last week. It’s so ridiculously time consuming for NO reason. And the constant notifications were making me crazy, especially when they were things like “John Smith commented on a post in the Buy All the Things group”. Get the F out of my face Facebook! It was incredibly liberating deleting the app, and I don’t miss it at all. If I really want to check in I go through the browser (which I hate, so I don’t usually do it) or I actually go on my laptop. I say good riddance!

    1. YES! All of my notifications are for like, telling me that OTHER people liked things I’ve never even seen on my timeline. I just checked Facebook on the web for the first time today, I had TWELVE notifications, and only ONE that was worth actually reading. I wish social media was more SOCIAL, less MEDIA. Then I closed out of it quick before I could get pulled in!!

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