Tonight I am deleting my facebook account. In preparation I’ve routinely invited what friends I have left on there to reach out, so that we may not lose touch forever. Several have, like this person who left this comment, the first interaction I’ve had with him in years. He has left me in tears:
Before you go, I wanted to recommend reading ‘You are not a Gadget’ by Jaron Lanier, who would certainly approve of your decision. He points out that we can’t have complicated, real relationships if they are reduced to predefined actions: wall posts, pokes, Likes, status updates, relationship status, etc.
All these things have been designed by Facebook to make it easy to tell advertisers how many people are single, gay, and emo (for example). They are all confining boxes from which you cannot deviate, and you end up simplifying yourself and your relationships with others to conform to Facebook’s design. And this modification is necessarily a simplification, because you can’t reduce a real relationship to a “timeline” of posts, comments, and shared “likes.”
From the book: “I know quite a few people…who are proud to say that they have accumulated thousands of friends on Facebook. Obviously this statement can only be true if the idea of friendship is reduced.”
Also from the book: “If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and contentless… Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.”
Even this comment is constrained by Facebook — it’s much too long for its liking, so most of it will be hidden by default. Sorry for that inconvenience. :P <—(how much depth and nuance can be conveyed in an icon like that one?)
We don’t have a real friendship anymore (though we did once…you were my first stage kiss!) but I wish you well. I’ll never remember your Facebook life, but I’ll always remember what our real friendship and unconstrained interactions were, during the time that we were together in the physical world. All the best; you deserve it.
