Everyday for the past two weeks, a subtle yet annoying red bar at the top of my Spotify player reminded me that my social life had failed to load up properly.
This is not the first time, nor that last time I suppose: 14 days ago I have indeed decided to get rid of my Facebook account. Back in 2010 I had previously deleted my account, somehow “just for fun” or more seriously to test the suicide 2.0 machine, an API-based service that helps you delete everything (comments, tags, mentions, etc.) from your Facebook account. Obvs they had their ass kicked by the blue and white giant (see for more info on their site). That was fun anyway. It didn’t last as I got back within a week with the benefits of a) a blank canvas b) no more boring engaged ‘friends’ from college in my feed.
This time I just decided to indulge myself in a little act of personal rebellion and, on a whim, I decided to disable my account. Fear not, reader, my account is still there, having a little nap in its glass coffin like the sleeping beauty. It’s only like another of these claims of mine, such as “I’m gonna quit smoking” on a Monday, when I surely put away my pack of smokes at the bottom of my drawer (until Thursday).
Anyhow, one of the first realisations past day #3 cravings and withdrawal symptoms, was that way too many things in my little world were connected to The Facebook
- Most of the online competitions to win free shizzle, that I was accessing via Twitter, were redirecting me to Facebook to bloody like a bloody page. I guess that’s fair enough: everything has a price, even free stuff, and these days “likes” are a common currency amongst brands and other institutions.
- Some details for some of the events I had tickets for, were only accessible on Facebook. Talking about accessibility, this is discrimination against Facebook disabled people just like me.
- That underage Swedish girl who I randomly met a few weeks ago suggested that she “would have to add me on Facebook”. You should have seen her face when I said I was not on Facebook… She didn’t even ask me for my phone number. Oh well. I have started breeding pigeons in my bedroom just in case.
- It now seems totally impossible to get in touch with that nice hot bloke I met the other day at this party without the Great Stalking Network. I am sometimes wondering how did our parents manage to hook up with the phone book?! This is actually one of my favourite scenes of The Social Network (this and when Justin Timberlake first shows up):
One of the basis of the greatest social network is actually hormone-based and I start to believe that without Facebook, we’d all be more relaxed, less peer-pressurised and would probably get laid much more often instead of wanking (not literally) around most of the time.
Anyway we’ve already seen that lots of people (preceded by the Scandies I believe) are withdrawing from that too-intrusive Facebook and so are investors. Check this link for info about that but basically the website is failing to meet their over-estimated ad sales & revenue targets and it looks as though one of the founding pillars of tomorrow’s society is about to gently collapse, just like MySpace did before it.
As someone smart whose name I can’t recall once said: social networks are just like clubs or gyms, they sometimes stop being the place to be and get replaced by the newest coolest place, with no particular reasons than the crowd’s good will.
Now, how long can you last out of that shit hole?
8502 
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