A Farewell to Conventional Social Media

Here's my first blogular (not a word) proclamation in years: I've deleted Facebook and Instagram AGAIN! I've done this at least five times over the last twenty years. I don't present this from a position of pride. I'm not proud of myself and how I've handled my social media presence--or addiction. I never really can stick to my decisions to delete my accounts. Theres an addiction element, a fear-factor (thanks Joe Rogan), a familial connection element, a communal element, and all of these things are tied together. 

My goal here is to reflect on my relationship with social media and hopefully help all two of you reading this to reflect on yours. For the sake of length, to honor your time, I'm going to break this into a few posts so as not to tax your attention span and increase your burden of boredom.

First, some background: I don't like social media. I never have and I never will. In fact, I loathe it. I'm not kidding. Sidebar: Is blogger a social media outlet? It could be, but not in the traditional sense. Though I had a blog before I had Facebook.

Concerning Facebook, the internet tells me that it (the revolting blob) was invented on February 4, 2004. I know it started with college students and ballooned to grotesque proportions from there. Now everyone has it. Sometime around Facebook's ominous time of origin I noticed that my friends were "on" it and had started inviting me to join. I should clarify: When I say friends I mean real friends, as in people I was actually friends with in my day to day life. 

I can't lie...I really thought Facebook was ridiculous at its inception. "You mean there's an online version of our stupid school picture directory? Sickening!" Though Zuckerberg's abomination was more than just a picture directory, I filed right into the fray like an idiot, creating my own profile--even proprietary Facebook terms make my skin crawl. I will never forget feeling like a bit of a sellout. Submitting myself and my "content" (not a widely-used term at the time) to the likes, dislikes, and comments of my "friends" was undesirable. But the time-honored dynamic was at play: Well...everyone else is doing it! Thusly, if all my friends were jumping off a digital cliff, I felt the moral obligation to do the same. 

Now, for the fifth, and hopefully final time, I do not have it. When I say "it" and italicize it I want you to think of the Stephen King novel, which was later adapted to film. That's how I feel about Facebook, a creepy, supernatural, killer, clown, watching you from the sewer, just waiting to tear your arm off.

I hope I have the discipline not to go back to Facebook (and Instagram). Over the next several days/weeks I plan to present my reasoning for deleting social media by reflecting on my love/hate relationship with it. Why do I hate it? Why did I love it? What did it do to me? Were my Facebook "friends" really my friends? Is it good for me to have immediate, 24/7, access to everyone I've ever known, with an additional group of people I've never met? Why does it seem to bury the art I create? Is it healthy for me to monetize my personal life and experiences, my family connections, my CHILD? As the quote goes: If a product is free, you are the product! Scary! Finally, Is what I get from Facebook worth what I put in? Why do random people use the platform to get their hooks in me? Why did Facebook stress me out so bad? More on all of those facets later. 

Down the road, I'm going to present some of the benefits and potential drawbacks (with solutions) of deleting social media--particularly Facebook and Instagram. Today, I close by saying: I'm glad to be gone! In the immediate aftermath, my stress level has decreased discernibly. More on that next time! I'll also present a roadmap of sorts, because I'd like to give my perspective on this issue in detail. In the meantime, watch this ten minute video of Jaron Lanier presenting his argument for social media deletion. It "sealed the deal" for me!