23 January 2011

Quitting Facebook Part 1

   With more than 500 million active users, and probably an inumerable amount of unactive users, Facebook has become a huge force on the internet. At any given time of the day or night millions upon millions of people are "connecting" to each other via this social networking site. According to the Facebook site itself, 700 billion minutes a month are spent on the site. People are spending more and more time on the site be it to keep in touch with old friends or distant family members or to do things slightly less important, like poke friends, post drunk party pictures, or cyber-stalk crushes.
    Facebook is not even just a computer application. More than 200 million users of facebook access it primarily on their mobile devices. Networking has never been more accessible. A person does not even have to be sitting down behind a desk to promote themselves, their company, or a product. They can now share everywhere and anything.
   I, like most people, began my Facebook experiance in a harmless way. It was 2007 and I was in my sophmore year of highschool. Like most of my friends I saw it as something "fun" to do. And, it was. I added friends, posted pictures and just did whatever I wanted. It wasn't until recently that I truely noticed how this once "harmless" thing was affecting me.
   It started off small. Checking my facebook when I first got up, seeing if anything worth while had happened since I had checked it 8 or so hours ago (right before I went to bed). At the worst stage of what I have recognized as an addiction, I would check my facebook probably 20 times a day. it was my internet homepage, the first thing that popped up anytime I opened the internet. I would spend hours a day, just trolling the site: creeping, posting inane things, scrolling through picture after picture after page after page.
   Now to the point of this whole post. Last night I deactivated my facebook. I have been "clean" for maybe 24 hours. And, it sucks. I feel like I'm jonesing for a internet site. An internet site. But I really see now how much I need this break.
   I take a lot of stock in the feedback I get from facebook. I only post pictures where I don't look tired, cranky, or horribly pudgy all which is how I look in real life about 97% of the time. I would rack my brain trying to accumulate a store of "interesting" interests that I have. I made sure all my info was equal parts witty, interesting, and appealing. All of my status updates were thought out in such a way to make me seem both approachable, fun, and (hopefully) appealing. I so badly wanted to seem cool and collected and, frankly, above the whole " I troll the internet because I'm bored and lonely" thing which was much closer to the truth than what I was presenting on my facebook. This is all why I decided to "quit" facebook. I spent so much time trying to make myself appear the way I want to be on the internet instead of making the necessary changes in my real, actual life that would help my become the way I want to for real.
   So there you have it. The motivation to my seemingly madness. I titled this a part 1. I believe that I will have more to say on the subject of authenticity and the social networking site in the future. I think that this is, for me at least, a postive step in the right direction.

ps- I'm including a video here that was the catalyst that gave me the motivation to do what I have needed to do for a long time.

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