Editorial: Why I Left Facebook After 7 Years, But Was Forced Back In

[hiptech]

I opened a fb account only to communicate, albeit it's usually just one-way, with my grandchildren. I found myself being asked to friend an awful lot of people with whom I communicated fairly regularly in a chat group. Now I have discovered that many of the latter no longer post in the chat group but only on fb, but - and it's a big one, a frustrating one -- no-one seems to scroll down the next time to read any comments. One might as well be invisible. The whole thing is absurd. But then I'm old, too, so I suppose that makes a difference.

With age comes wisdom...

 

[zorg]

I was sort of in the same situation a few years back.. wanted to get rid of FB, did, and was this winter getting spotify but to no avail without an FB account.. it really sucks how they married themselves to suckerberg.
Anyway, I opened my account again, and turned off everything I could, I did not want to make a dummy account. So this is what I am using now.. I never use/login to my FB account, only using it for Spotify.

 

[Guest]

ive never had facebook and good chance ill never use facebook
miss it ? ummm no

 

[revam1]

Well, I do agree that facebook is a pile of doo doo, but, I use it to keep in touch with my friends. See, I'm a student and I decided to live away from home to "start a new life, and meet knew friends" (also plunge my pockets in debt) - therefore, Facebook is unfortunately the best option in order to stay in touch, share and IM my friends.

 

[Night Hacker]

I get tired of some of the crap on Facebook, but I have slowly beed weeding it out. People that post garbage constantly and nothing worthwhile I remove from my friends list. Right now my friends list is at 65. I do like keeping in contact with relations and using Facebook as an easy fast way to share recent photos and events in their lives. I know for a fact there's a couple people I wouldn't hear from again without it. I don't play ANY of the Facebook games, and when I get requests from people, I either block the person from sending game requests (done that twice) or more likely I will just block the app/game itself. I try not to get on Facebook too much, usually in the morning AFTER I have spent time with my wife and I am still waking up. Then sometimes in the evening to take a break from my programming. I find myself getting sick of all the "deep meaningful photo comments" than inevitably make people respond "that's so true!", or the "click like to show you care" or "click like and XXXX will pay $1 per like..." etc... I try to scroll past those quickly. It can be a good service if used properly and in moderation. I also can't stress enough to check your privacy settings!

I liked your article though, if I ever do decide to leave it (and I have been tempted a lot lately) I'll follow your idea of creating a new account.

 

[ReederOnTheRun]

I like FB, I can post all of my awesome ideas and share them with the world. Plus people get the pleasure of seeing a picture of me wherever they have internet access. I like to see it as my gift to the rest of society.

Cue the haters.

 

[learninmypc]

I've had two phony facebook accounts but deleted them both. I've never had a problem keeping up to date with my family/friends & not to mention, I'm using the same "privacy settings" I set 15 years ago & no problems.
I get sick of hearing "Check out our facebook page" every day on tv. facebook IMHO is a disease & doing bad on the stock market too. What was it, just the other I heard the facebook CO-Founder sold his shares facebook, I'll gladly live without it.

 

[penn919]

I've actually been planning to delete my facebook for a while now. This article inspired me to finally go through with it this past Friday. If you're worried about losing some worthwhile comments or messages, just download your account data. For some reason it took like 3hrs to compile a mere 1MB of data into a zip, but everything is there.

The only reason I created a facebook account at all was because of a college course I took required me to do so. Since then I had been giving it a try but honestly I'm not that social at all and aside from occasionally approving/rejecting friend requests and "pokes?" (still haven't figured out what those are) I was rarely on there.

Your complaint about religious preaching is spot on. I've got an uber nutty religious family that would always be posting that crap on my wall or filling my message inbox. For whatever reason facebook puts them into overdrive with that nonsense. It's something I can definitely live without.They don't ever do that with my normal email.

 

[learninmypc]

I know people that tell me with out facebook they couldn't keep in touch with their family & friends all over the world. Hogwash.
I have friends all over the world & I have absolutely no problem staying in touch with them via email.
And I don't have the "update my status" crap.
I still can't figure out why news stations tell you to "connect" with them on facebook. Why? I have them bookmarked.
What are the facebook addict's going to do if/when facebooks bottom falls out? LOL.(y)

 

[ANTIjailbreak]

I have a facebook and in my opinion only people that are far away from friends or family really need it. what I do like about facebook is that with mobile numbers they are personal and u dont want everybody having it. but with facebook there are certain people in your life that u want to connect with but dont want them having your number so facebook is fine for that reason. I get everybodys point about some people obsessing a little. people think your isolated if you dont have a facebook. thats not true. if you have a mobile than your not isolated.

 

[Guest]

Sorry but I really don't understand how this constitutes as news Someone closes their Facebook account and then goes back to using it. Great. Why did it need a whole news article?

 

[mailpup]

@guest above, I guess you overlooked that it's not a news article. It's an editorial.

 

[Jason Myers]

I'd drop Facebook if I could. But I was sort of pulled into it by my family.

What ticks me off is, in CNN's view, if you don't have a Facebook, you're antisocial... standing in front of a computer is more antisocial. I'd rather speak with those around me at a pub or what-have-you than constantly have app requests from lame games hurled at me by family members I don't even know.. and I can't even be my own freaking self.
I'd move to Google Plus if I could. Then you have certain circles. I can keep my close friends I can cuss with in one "circle" and my family I have to tiptoe through the tulips with in another.


I wish I could quit, but my guilty conscious would set in.

 

[learninmypc]

@JasonMyers. May I ask what is wrong with keeping in touch with family & friends via email?
I've never had a "real" facebook acct & see no point of one since I've been keeping in touch very well with ALL my family & friends via email.(y)No guilty feelings either.

 

[Guest]

Different case with me. My boyfriend and I both have FB but we never communicate through it. We just IM like gtalk or skype, make call or video call and its realtime. I bet FB could not do this,at least not as convenience as IM.

 

[Guest]

The thing about Facebook I like is that you don't have to log in! You don't have to have 600 "friends". You don't have to accept annoying app invites/likes whatever the case. I too was there from the beginning and have mainly used Facebook to connect to friends locally and abroad. Sure we are getting bombarded by continuous adverts but we have the option to change that (to a certain degree). But those are really petty things.

It must be quite something that Facebook can affect a person like you to write an article about how happy you are and that you have left it. Sure, kudos to you for being a rebel and going against the flow, but I think your post on leaving Facebook is a bit of a hype and pretty lame in this day and age. Sure your post will probably sway a few people out there, but most people - just delete their account and move on.

 

[Guest]

Hi. I left facebook about a year ago and never looked back, the author's reasons sound like mine. Nothing in particular, I just started to become sort of... irritated with all of it. I told people it's like I lifted my head up, looked outside, then back at facebook and thought "what is this thing, what am I doing here." Anyway so now, and what led me to this article, is that a work related reunion is being organized via facebook. I can't really know the thinking, but it appears as if an assumption was made that "everyone" is on facebook. There is no alternate way of signing up, specifying guests, hotel info, blah. Well I'm not going to create an account to do whatever I'm supposed to, I'll just crash. Maybe I won't get a cool nametag or a special gift like a plaque. Heh, I will show them dammit. If anyone knows who I am or gives a crap.

 

[Guest]

I *personally* don't trust people who aren't on facebook. If I find out someone I know isn't on facebook, I'm MUCH less likely to want to befriend them in real life.

Facebook is just a tool to use. You don't even need to use every day, you can go 3 months without updating it if you want.

But not being on it altogether is to me a very Luddite and anti-social behavior. That's my honest opinion about it.

Most of the people in real life I found not being on facebook at all were either not very social people or not very caring about others, honestly.

 

[red1776]

I *personally* don't trust people who aren't on facebook. If I find out someone I know isn't on facebook, I'm MUCH less likely to want to befriend them in real life.

Facebook is just a tool to use. You don't even need to use every day, you can go 3 months without updating it if you want.

But not being on it altogether is to me a very Luddite and anti-social behavior. That's my honest opinion about it.

Most of the people in real life I found not being on facebook at all were either not very social people or not very caring about others, honestly.

I can only hope that you are spoofing the situation. You actually categorize those that choose not to 'Facebook' as anti social and "uncaring" of others in one broad sweeping generalization?
That may be the most ignorant, prejudiced, solipsistic and preposterous statements ever uttered on these forums.

 

[captaincranky]

....[ ]....That may be the most ignorant, prejudice, solipsistic and preposterous statements ever uttered on these forums.

For whatever other earthly reason do you propose it would be prefaced by, "Guest"?

Oh and BTW, "prejudice", in that context, needs to be in the past tense. I'm off now, to look up "solipsistic", as I have so many times in the past.....

 

[red1776]

For whatever other earthly reason would it be prefaced by, "Guest"?

Oh and BTW, "prejudice", in that context, needs to be in the past tense. I'm off now to look up, "solipsistic", as I have so many times in the past.

Correct as usual. Thats why you are 'The word smith'. ***fixed**

 

[captaincranky]

Correct as usual. Thats why you are 'The word smith'. ***fixed**

Ah, that's so nice, you ol' silver tongued rascal!

The correct plural of "Thats", would be "those". (You omitted the a**-POS-trophy). (Still "smithing" my little heart out, I can't help myself. It must be "OCDinglish".

 

[red1776]

Ah, that's so nice, you ol' silver tongued rascal!

The correct plural of "Thats", would be "those". (You omitted the a**-POS-trophy). (Still "smithing" my little heart out, I can't help myself. It must be "OCDinglish".

You are as handsome as you are wise...hehe
That's why you're the ' word smith' ...anything?

 

[Night Hacker]

I was going to get rid of Facebook, several times. I strongly disagree that it is "teenagerish" (looks up that word). It does help me keep in touch with family without the extra expense of long distance, I am not much of a telephone person. Plus I have added people that I otherwise would not know that I would not want to lose contact with. They're not real life friends, but we share certain beliefs and I look forward to some of our conversations. I don't think this would be considered childish in any way. I block each and every app/game whatever that comes along without exception. I think I have just about every game that is available on Facebook (except the newest ones) blocked now so I rarely see requests anymore. Some of the posts can be annoying but like real life, some of what people say in person can be annoying, you just ignore it and move on.

I disagree with the statement someone made that people that don't use Facebook are anti-social. It's just not for everyone, some people prefer to talk to their friends in person, and I admit that I should probably do more "face time" than I do. But to not befriend someone because t hey don't use some website? That's going too far. It's just a tool, some people like different tools, some don't like tools at all. It doesn't make them anti-social, it just makes them different.

 

[captaincranky]

You are as handsome as you are wise...hehe
That's why you're the ' word smith' ...anything?

I got nothing. It's as pristine as a newborn's soul! It could be said of your post, "why, it's immaculately conceptualized"!