…doesn’t that sound like fun?
I have an ongoing internal debate with myself over the social networking site that has raging for years. Earlier last week I read that the company will soon be going public and since then I have been thinking about closing my Facebook down (but I think about doing this at least twice a year).
The problem is the pros of having a Facebook are really really great. But there are so very many cons to keeping it.
Reasons to get rid of my Facebook page:
-Too many baby pictures
-Too many wedding pictures
-Too many people hating their job
-Too many people hating their life
-Too many people talking about their babies
-Too many people talking about how much the love their partner
-Too many people talking about being irritated with their partner
-Too many people complaining about not having a partner
-Too many “Jesus” posts: prayers/pleas/thanks/encouragement/etc.
-Too many posts deliberately instigating all the Jesus people
-Too many posts politically charged (in either direction)
-Too many posts about sports/tv/awards/celebrities
-It will force me to reach out to my friends in real life a whole
lot more.
-Too many “life obligation friends:” distant relatives, work
people, friends of friends that I may see socially a few times
a year, relatives I see annually or do not like, etc..
Generally, I’m just annoyed by Facebook. I am not a people person, I do not like most people, and, honestly I would much rather be alone than with most people. And really, as much as I love the narcissistic aspect of “look at how awesome I am!” I do not like actually putting some of that stuff out into the gigantic internet void.
Reasons to keep my Facebook page:
-I like the ease and simplicity of keeping up with my “real life”
friends: seeing photos, weekend plans, etc..
-It makes party-planning and concert-inviting incredibly easy.
-I’ve reconnected with old friends with whom I’ve lost touch.
-We have distant plans of opening an etsy store and the social
networking business aspect is most-likely needed.
Obviously if we are tallying these as a scoresheet, my Facebook page will be terminated immediately. But the positive side of Facebook has a much stronger pull than nearly all of the negatives. Last year in the post-holiday moving mess, I abandoned Facebook for almost three solid weeks and I didn’t miss it all that much.
What I have been seriously considering this past week is scaling back my Facebook in a major way; taking down most of my pictures, not posting directly onto my wall (just letting twitter fill it), getting rid of all my information except one email address, and other less participatory things like that. I have a Twitter account, I have this blog, I have three active email addresses, I just don’t need Facebook. And keeping it that way still allows me to issue event invites/reply to event invites, keep in touch with out-of-town friends that I really do enjoy interacting with even in such a small superficial way, and allows me to keep the account open for the eventual store page/ads. It would also mean that I no longer have to be such a fucking German about who I let into my Friends list (because I refuse to do the “hide” thing or the different group things just on principle). And, by not posting directly to my wall, it will push me to post more on here–even if it is random internet finds I wander across.
I have very nearly talked myself into doing this over the past two or three days…we will see what happens. Do you like your Facebook page?
-K
If I had to be 100% honest, I’d say there were two reasons that I keep my facebook page:
1) For the blog traffic. All my posts automatically post to facebook, and I get a good amount of traffic that way. Shameless, I know.
2) Making myself feel better about my own life by looking up people I know and laughing at their lameness. Bitchy, I know.
Yeah, I constantly feel better about my own life by what I see others doing on Facebook; but that just leads me to questions like, “Why am I friends with this person again?”
But I have Queen Bitch tendencies.