Thanksgiving morning, I decided to take a temporary break from Facebook. No big feud or particular drama proceeded this decision. I just woke up one day and decided I had seen enough pictures of other people’s pets for a while.
Like Number 5 from Short Circuit, I love input. I’m an information junkie. I regularly find myself meandering through Wikipedia, one click after the next. I can no longer watch a movie without having IMDB open while I’m watching it. I love listening to podcasts on a multitude of subjects and I love watching documentaries on Netflix, pretty much regardless of the topic. As I type this, our television is tuned to CNN.
But not all input is equal. Recently I’ve found myself distracted and overwhelmed by an onslaught of noise. On my computer, tablet, and phone, I’m constantly being fed information: how many miles people I barely know jog, links to urban myths that were debunked a decade ago, and pictures of other people’s dinner. I finally had to call a time out.
To its credit, Facebook does not make itself easy to walk away from. The Facebook icon on my phone has a small red number that tells me just how many things I’ve missed. It’s quantifiable. “Today, you missed 27 things.” Those things range from “someone you know sent you a message” to “someone you barely know liked a picture of sushi you posted two years ago.” When that little red number hits three digits (about every 48 hours) I launch the app, click “updates” (which clears the number, and close the app.
With Facebook messenger, not only do you get that little red number, but you also get a pleasant little “ding,” not unlike the sound one might hear if they got a question right on a gameshow. “Someone has messaged you, and you’re a winner!” I still check those.
From a completely narcissistic point of view, I miss sharing things with people. My neighbor put up a lot of Christmas lights. We ate Mexican food with some friends. I took the kids to basketball practice. We ate at a food truck. None of these topics warrant longer blog posts; at best, they’re minor points of conversation. By the time I encounter real people to tell these things too, most of them have been flushed from my cache.
For that matter, why is it that telling people I’m eating a hotdog seems perfectly normal, while telling someone “I ate a hotdog two weeks ago” seems at best awkward. Borderline creepy, really.
Approximately 42 times this week Susan has mentioned things to me about other people. Each of these factoids either begins or ends with the phrase “on Facebook.” “On Facebook, I saw Amy went on vacation.” “I saw Amy got a new car on Facebook.” Obviously Facebook is a convenient and rapid way of keeping tabs on what’s going on with people. I suppose if I had seen Amy in person in the past 20 years, the fact that she had purchased a 4 year old Kia would have affected me more.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not personally contributing much to the greater good either with my own updates. Skimming through my last few Facebook updates: I ate some pie, I hung a television on the wall, and I had a cat stand on my head.
Today at Morgan’s basketball game, my dad told me his mother is in the hospital. He heard via Facebook; I hadn’t heard at all. The side effect to excusing yourself to the world’s biggest social media site is you also excuse yourself from the primary way many people share information.
I don’t know how long I’ll steer clear of Facebook. There is peace in balance. Plus, my phone is quickly filling up with stupid pictures that I have nowhere else to share.
You’ve been missed. We retirees rely on Facebook, since we don’t chat via phone or meetings anymore. If you stay off too long, the next “ding” you hear will be your doorbell. I’ll be arriving for a visit so I can catch up!
But FB is how I got to here… I do have to say there are many of us that “live” on FB. One reason is because it is a very easy way for a lot of my friends from all over the place, my co-workers, and others can communicate, and keep up with what is going on in each others lives. Most of my “friends” from work are on FB, and we don’t see each other everyday like most people do in an office environment. We only see each other when the two of us are in the cab of a locomotive, when we pass each other on the tracks, when we see each other at the yard offices, and at the hotels we stay in…
If you do go back, check out the FB Chrome extension named FBP for Facebook Purity. I deleted FB from my mobile devices and only check in on the laptop…using FBP. FBP is customizable to weed out the news and many other items. I get notifications on who deletes me. I also use keywords to block posts.
A cat on your head? PIX OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN
I can relate. I have been trying to cut down on meaningless posts. Most of my recent posts have been in one of two categories:
1. I have something to post to inform, enlighten, or uplift people.
2. I have something to make people laugh. Maybe a baby picture, maybe a cat picture, maybe a story of some conversation at work that took a weird turn.
3. I have books/stuff to sell and I’m sounding the dinner bell.
Wait, that’s three. Three. THREE CATEGORIES! [insert Count laugh here]
I have all but banned myself from hitting “share” and regurgitating other people’s articles.
I’ve noticed a lot of my activity is happening in groups on FB, and not so much out in the open.
And, like you, I don’t care how far someone has walked/bicycled/flapped their arms and flown today. I don’t care what they had to eat or how much they’ve had to drink (there are a couple of folks on my feed who feel the need to brag about the latter; I weep for their livers). And of course, there’s the political pundits. For the love of Pete and objects shaped similarly to Pete… I’d go to a political website if I wanted that.
I am also keenly aware that a pretty small subset of my FB friends care about babies, books, cats, rocket launches, or sci-fi. I’ve been trying to channel that stuff into groups where applicable. I have relatives who don’t understand why my whole feed isn’t baby pictures. I have friends who wonder why my whole feed isn’t action figures and video games. A lot of it depends on the point of interest at which you connect with the person.
Maybe THAT should be Facebook’s next big innovation: only show me posts from X if they relate to Y. Have people meta-tag their posts instead of hashtagging them. But that’s probably too much work for the average teenybopper.
Brilliant post Rob and one that sums up my feelings lately too. As much as I’m guilty of continuing to crack wise on FB, I am less and less interested in what most people are posting. It all has that “been there done that” feel, and that information overload is very apt.
I agree wholeheartedly with Maury E. Delete Facebook from your mobile devices. That’s all you really need to do in order to prevent Facebook from exacting too high a price from your life. Only checking on your computer means you won’t be checking every second of the day – instead you’ll be checking at set time. Remember the 70s, when you had to watch TV shows when they were actually on? Nobody was catching 5 minutes of Dallas when they went to the bathroom at 10am at work.
I made the same decision about three weeks ago and am not missing it one bit. I took the further steps of deleting all my app installs for FB and deactivating* my account so as not to be tempted by the mounting notification counts. This is not to say that I won’t be back at some point but for now I certainly am enjoying not having brain cycles tied up by wondering what everyone else is up to.
* – Facebook doesn’t really let you “quit”, but on request they will deactivate your account in case you decide to come back to it. The real reason has more to do with the fact that they still want to aggregate and market all that sweet sweet personal datayou uploaded for them. I liken the experience to trying to break up with a significant other who insists that the two of you stay ” just friends”, and then insists on holding onto the key to your apartment so he/she can water your plants whenever you go on vacation.
I went off FB for a whole season, this past summer, and I didn’t miss it. Once I returned I went on it a lot less. Twitter has a quicker way if scrolling and filtering through data. Still there should be a new social networks based off of interests. Like StarWarsBook or DCComicsbook – all if which reminds me of usenet groups. Tech just goes in circles.