Farewell, Facebook!
Farewell, Facebook!
Last night I took a couple of boxes of ammo up on the computer tower and defriended about 360 people. Then I climbed down into my Facebook Account page and defriended myself. I felt about as much guilt as eating a grape at Publix, a found a sense of release similar to giving notice at a really bad job. No longer was I bound to people by an endless exchange of zero-value gifts. No more pokes, peeks, or links to pathologically cute kittens. No more invitations to plant carrots or take over rival waterfront gangs. I am now Facebook Free: Hallelujah, and pass the free time!
I never really wanted to be on Facebook, but peer pressure drove me to it. My friends were joining, so in order to belong to the gang, I signed up. At first it was a wild, colorful experience – the site is a regular rat maze of 6th grade fun. Flashing lights and silly quizzes and intimate messages from people I barely knew combined with the smell of stale beer and the chilling thought that my sophomore year WASN’T just a bad dream. People tagged me in awful, out of focus cell phone shots, and unknown relatives appeared in the cedar shavings on the floor. Off in ArcadeLand there were mindless yet addicting games like Farmville and YoVille and MafiaVille and VilleVille. This was a sugar high at the county fair, and it held my attention for nearly a week. Suddenly I had friends in England and Nigeria and South America and Tampa. Heck, I even knew one of them. Logging on became a drug, but not good one and after a few hours it felt like I had swigged an overdose of Wal-Mart house brand cough syrup. A wild look came to my eye. I joined groups whose sole purpose was to become the biggest group on Facebook. I stopped taking showers. I even considered writing a game…
The Internet, once a promised land of peace, love and great discounts on hotel rooms is now a gritty, slightly creepy place, sort of like North Beach in San Francisco. The Zynga games are a sham enticing people to sign up for overpriced and deceptive services. Mark Zuckerberg thinks privacy is dead, and he’s planning to desecrate the corpse. I keep finding endless pages of permissions in obscure corners of Facebook, all defaulted on. The FBI and CIA and KGB and MOSSAD and Scientology and the Taliban are freely collecting my data, reading my wall posts, and trolling for incriminating pictures, or enough innocent pictures with similar lighting to do some fun photo shopping. Even insurance companies are checking up on me. An aluminum foil beanie just won’t cut it anymore.
While there’s an innocent looking “Deactivate account” button, it’s not that simple. “Deactivate” is not “Remove Completely”, and merely puts you in cold storage. To really get out of the Mob you need to erase everything you’ve ever posted and disconnect every game, group, and freind you’ve ever had. I started by erasing photos and videos, then I killed two groups I created to plug a project last year. Since then I’ve exited another 300 groups; few I recall joining, but even so they all were happily sending the details of my and all my freinds ‘net experience to the world. As I killed groups, I left messages directing real people to my real e-mail. Then I started the final shut down, defriending people in alphabetical order. Each ex-friend became a clear Plexiglas cube floating weightlessly around me. Near the very end, a grainy black and white video tape began playing, and a man in an ill fitting suit revealed what was happening: Orwell was off by 20 years, but if I became a Runner I could avoid becoming Soylent Green. Resistance WASN’T futile. I extended my middle finger toward Face Book, and pushed the Delete Account button. Electricity flowed up my spine, I blacked out, and reawoke in my own living room, staring at a test pattern. I got up and walked out the door, into a muggy Florida night, fre once again.
See you in real life.
Oh, yeah. All your virtual gold fish are dead. Sorry.
CFG
Update 6-22-2010
I lasted 2 months. I had to re-enter this insanity, so many shows promote themselves EXCLUSIVELY on facebook. However, my new profile has virtually no factual information about me, and has been heavily restricted.
I feel so…cheap.
