To anyone who is fortunate enough to have not yet joined the Facebook community please read on before subjecting yourself to a barage of endless surveys, braindead quizzes and constant hounding from people who you just haven't been bothered with over the last ten years.
Recently as in over the past year I signed up to facebook and even more recently I decided to get the hell out of the social networking world. Never one to be called unreasonable I approached the whole fad of Facebook with an open mind. At first yes it may have been useful to keep in contact with a select few soon after though it was another story, getting notifications about getting notifications, being poked is it just me or is there anyone else in this world that doesn't understand the point or meaning of the phenomenon of poking on facebook. Then there are the friend requests , what is worse than getting a message from some inbred from the outback of Australia saying hi lets be friends?. Just the thought of some clown doing a search for anybody with a similar surname thinking how interesting it would be to 'connect' with somebody on the other side of the globe is enough to give me a stress rash. Connect more like harass. Having received a selection of these random requests I wasted precious seconds of my life contemplating if I should ignore or reply explaining exactly why Im ignoring . That in itself brought about more anxiety as when you are new to this kind of harassment you arent sure whether hitting the ignore button will notify the aforementioned freak to the fact you have snubbed their attempts at cross community bridge building. Questions like what if they are some nut job that will pester me with more requests having had their online ego bruised? What if it is some sort of hacking virus? With such contemplating and internal conflict the requests build up and everytime you log on there's another one of these requests . Just seeing the icon telling me I had unanswered requests made me want to dance on my computer before pulling it apart key by key using only my sharpest canine tooth.
Let's for the sake of objectiveness look beyond the friend requests from strangers and concentrate on friend requests from those who you may actually have known at some miserable stage of your life. Lets face it if you haven't been in contact with somebody in ten years there's probably good cause. Oh somebody who I went to school with has stumbled upon my profile and wants to be friends so we can compare achievements or keep each other informed of the goings on in our social lives. Hmm how hard is it to keep in contact with somebody you went to school with? Really if I wanted to get in touch it wouldn't have taken a the services of a private investigator to do so, chances are I would have an idea of where you lived, would know somebody that has your contact details or if needs be could perhaps even ask at the school for any personal contact information on a past pupil. If I haven't joined you at the bar, picked up that phone to see how things are then I just don't care. I don't care with such passion that I end up out of politeness and a fear of tipping a fragile mind over the edge that I accept the friend request from a past aquaintance only to be inundated with notifications and updates of whatever this ludite gets up to at past , present or future. As I broadened my friends list from being about six to being six plus a dozen who I was too polite to say no to just incase it sparked a self evaluation ultimately leading to a breakdown, as, if quizzed on reasons for saying no I would have to be brutally honest to the point of cruelty. Then come the updates on conversations between people you dont want to know and people you used to know, blah, blah, blah! Tit bits of dialogue of no use to anybody but the two people that are central to the conversation, why would anybody want to follow up on ends of conversations and quips here and there. Last time I checked I wasn't into voyeurism, so thanks for informing me that so and so said "Yeah I know lol", or "Great night out loved your new dress," or " You're definitely an alco ya mad yoke!", but simply I just don't care.
Already I can hear the pro Facebookers out there saying no its great. I got in touch with loads of friends who are travelling thanks to Facebook. Well if you are happy to lose contact with friends when in this era of communications it only takes the merest of efforts to 'find' someone then I wouldnt like to be a friend in need.
To anyone that says they enjoy keeping in touch via Facebook I say you don't enjoy keeping in touch you enjoy spying. Whether it be wanting to know if that ex has found someone else, lost weight, had kids, taking sneaky looks through that asshole you sat beside in school or college's recent photos seeing where he has been recently and who with, who's doing what, where, when, how well , how bad? Not so long ago that sort of behaviour would have you labelled as a voyeur, a peeping tom, a nosy busy body, a stalker but alas thanks to the joys of Facebook it is now simply called staying in touch.
In the days since ditching all that Facebook has to offer I have burst less blood vessels, had a clutter free inbox, and am safe in the knowledge that I no longer have to suffer the ramblings of those who I couldn't care less about. If writing about my experience saves even one innocent soul from the pain I endured for so long then it will have been all worthwhile.
Yours not contactable via Facebook,
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