Operation ‘So Long Facebook’

(Click here for pt. 2 of #opsolongfb)

Hello everybody and welcome to my blog!

This page is part of a bigger project. The project to finally get off Facebook for good….The legendary social network…

There are many reasons to leave Facebook and many reasons to stay on it. Arguably, there are a lot of advantages connected with staying. I mean, there is a reason that despite all these close-to-criminal terms of services, despite the fact that everything you post automatically becomes property of Facebook, despite the (very) addictive properties and despite not knowing whatever happens to ones data…many people choose to remain part of the network.

And I can perfectly empathize with that. My decision to quit Facebook is a hard one. It means making life more complicated and potentially losing contacts that could be useful in the future. Not to speak of the useful event function I won’t be able to use anymore. How will I know what’s going on in my city, in the world? Will I not miss out on many opportunities to meet people online and in real life? The answer to that is probably…yes, I will. The question then is, if this will actually affect my life negatively. And the answer to that is…I don’t know. Only time will tell.

So far I have ben off the grid for a bit more than a week and I feel very good about it. Contrary to what I would have expected, I had a socially and creatively very satisfying time. The cause for that could be my Facebook blackout. But who knows? I would love to conclude that leaving Facebook improved my life but it’s clearly to early to tell. What I can say so far though: The action to pick up a cellphone and call a friend to get dinner is much rather taken if not given the instant gratification that Facebook provides. Without a constant illusion of a social life, I feel much more prone to actually having one. Also, without my lengthy dwelling times, staring at a screen and waiting that someone – oh someone –  would please LIKE the picture I just posted, unsurprisingly I have more time to go out, play guitar or study.

But I’m only in the first phase of my operation. At this point, my Facebook profile is merely deactivated. This means that nobody can see it, but I can reactivate it by merely logging in. Until I actually delete my account, (hopefully) nuking all the information I ever posted, some steps want to be taken. And one of these steps was to crate a WordPress blog. So hi there :).

In sum, my plan is to replace many of the advantages that Facebook offers. I am spreading my email address to people I want to stay in touch with. I created this blog in order to still share interesting things I found on the web. I relaunched my twitter for similar purposes. I discovered Flickr for sharing my photos without giving away the copyright to hands, smelling of corporate money.  And when I want to meet people, I recently started doing something I haven’t done in a while. I picked up a phone and called. And it worked!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have the illusion that all this will replace Facebook. But I do have the illusion that I don’t have to accept all these concerns connected to my Facebook profile in order to have a satisfying social life and a good experience on the internet. Let’s see if this is indeed an illusion.

I’d say…Operation ‘so long Facebook’…initiated.

Cheers!