Brief Exodus From Facebook

For this blog entry, I shall be using the Blogger App for my phone, as part of my experiment for this site. This could be handy for situations where I may not have access to an actual PC (where I predict I may need to do further editing, such as spell checks and inserting YouTube videos). Or in this case, at times where I can't be bothered leaving my bed.

Not posted via mobile technology (see last paragraph)

I found this article on Google+ where the author talks about her reasons for deleting her Facebook account. There were a few interesting points, not all of them negative (considering the fact that I found this piece on an (unfortunately) unpopular alternative to Facebook.

It states how social network sites can enhance current relationships with friends, acquaintances and family members, but at the same time, gives other people a passive view into your own world through what you post. It also makes references to annoying functions of the site such as the timeline and the ever changing privacy settings. Even some of the comments at the end make interesting points about the reluctance of some people to add or delete people they don't really have much in common with

This article was of some interest to me, because sometime towards the end of May, I deleted all my friends off Facebook and deactivated my account.  My original plan was to periodically delete two groups of people from my friends list before I went away, and I will give the rest of my friends fair warning that I would deactivate my account. I planned to spend a year in a new country, giving me a fresh start in life, so I didn't want to waste time looking to what was going on in the country I was leaving. I am sick of home, so I don't to make myself homesick also.

Unfortunately my first choice of country hit a snag, coupled with a few stressful events which include personal, work and health issues, along with a disasterous trip to London, in which I finally snapped, and let loose some drunken tirade on Facebook.

Now I have done this quite a few times throughout the years on every social networking site I've ever been on. As for the nature of what I wrote, I genuinely can't remember, as I deleted the posts right away, without even looking at who commented on those status updates.

One of my closest friends said it wasn't really that bad, it's just something incoherent while drunk. But I was very embarrassed, because not only can friends and casual acquaintances read it, but so can family members and work colleagues. So as soon as I got to an internet kiosk in London Gatwick, I deleted everybody.
Ever since I got rid of my Facebook account, it made me notice a few things, especially what FB can mean to others.

Less than half an hour of cutting the online chord, I get a text message from one of my closest friends who was angry about my choice to delete her, wondering what exactly she did that made me come to that decision. I was very shocked, and had to text her, along with another friend who informed her of other things in my life that she may not have heard about, just so she knew what the whole story was. I admit I never gave full warning to everybody, especially my close friends. But in that state of mind, it was hard to think straight, and I was actually in tears as I didn't want to hurt one of my closest, dearest friends. Thankfully, while she may not have agreed with my actions, she understood why.

I was taken aback by this exchange in a way, because I always felt that friendship was more than an online profile. I had friends telling me about some video they saw on YouTube, or about some photos of a festival they were at. They were telling me to check them out, but then they followed this up with "oh wait, I forgot, you're not on Facebook anymore". Last night, someone sent me a text asked me when I was coming back to Facebook, because his birthday was coming up, and he couldn't invite me to an event page he created for it. Sincd he was texting me at the time, why didn't it occur to him to just TEXT me the details for his birthday?

Some people can really get offended once they find out someone hit the "unfriend" button on their profile. Which I can relate to, because I too once felt that way. I remember the feeling of rejection and sudden dismissal, the questions you ask yourself as to what you actually did to them, if anything, which made it harder to speak to these people if you ran into them in public.

Over the years, I try not to take it to heart, if it's some casual acquaintance you rarely talk to in the first place. But it is also hard when you thought you were on good terms with the person to begin with. And when it was someone who you thought you were good friends with, you do feel bitter. Like one person who I was friends with for years, but who I find out was making fun of me behind my back, complaining about a certain personality trait of mine that he also had (pot kettle black), maybe its best that I'm not connected to that two faced dumb fat fuck, and not waste my time writing an angry message to him.

But it was when I started deleting people that I got the full brunt from those who I deleted. I mentioned earlier that I planned to periodically deleted two groups of people before I went away. I got through one group at the turn of the new year. While there were some people who I never wanted to speak to again, there were others who were, bitterness aside, nice enough people, especially two who I still had regular contact with through Facebook.

In an effort to keep my private life away from this blog, I won't divulge any details as to who those individuals are. I'm sure most them noticed that I deleted them, whether they were offended or if they even gave a crap, I don't know. But I will assume that they won't talk to me ever again, which I can understand. Infact, I'd be confused if they did.

But I did get some personal messages asking why I deleted them, and I did try to explain to one of the two people I felt guilty for deleting (unfortunately it was after a gig and I was inebriated at the time). So I sent those people an email explaining my reasons as to why I deleted them, which I admitted were a bit brash, but I'd prefer to be honest and straight with them, and I genuinely wished them well in the future. And I apologised that, at this stage in my life, I didn't know I could have these people in my life at this time.

It's funny that over a month since I deleted my account, I don't really miss Facebook. It is annoying that I am not informed of any upcoming events (birthdays, gigs, etc), know what else is going on in other people's lives, and I feel bad for cutting off those who I rarely see nowadays, from old college colleagues to people I met while abroad. Hopefully there will be a time that I will be able to patch things up, but I will also have to accept rejection if that is not the case (y'know, the whole "made your bed" analogy).

I also noticed that I don't waste enough time on the internet, whether on PC or mobile, going through Facebook. Maybe this has become a blessing in disguise, which has lead me to concentrate on other things, whether it be work, exercise, film, or even this blog. If I do return to the evils of that particular social networking site, I hope I will not fall back into those old habits. In the meantime, if I get the urge to share something pointless over the net, I'll use Google+. Nobody else will read it, but if I was to imagine a comparision, it would be an alcoholic drinking a non-alcoholic beer.

Speaking of alcohol, no matter how many times I did it in the past, especially during that hellish London trip, I'm still surprised that, no matter how shitfaced I get, to the point that I can barely walk, let alone speak, I can still manage to log into Facebook, and all the others before that. How the fuck is that even possible? I will never know. Well thanks to my time away from Facebook, no drunken bollocks will be posted anytime soon. Even though I'm taking a break from it for a while, for a variety of reasons. One of which for health reasons, to see if I am able to lose weight. I'm actually seeing some improvement, so who knows, I might actually get rid of this beer belly after all.

But I'm starting to go off topic, so I better wrap this up. After I deleted my Facebook account, I did get some texts from people who noticed I was gone and wondered how I was. I appreciated those texts, along with the support from my close friends. So when I'm ready to go back to Facebook, I'll be sure to add them as a friend, if they'll have me. And hopefully I won't be in a position to go through this whole mess again.

For this last paragraph, I got out of bed, and logged onto my computer to see how writing on the app worked out.

On a final note, the Blogger App is okay, but you are not given any freedom to post images anywhere you want, the paragraphs are not even spaced out, and there is no function to post YouTube videos. Speaking of which, the selection from YouTube via the "insert a video" function is limited, compared to the actual YouTube site. Hence why I'm posting a live version of the song below, as opposed to the studio version. Lame.