Bye-bye FB!

After weeks of agonizing about it, tonight I have finally mustered enough resolve to do it. I quit facebook.

But wait... what is this? So many questions to deactivate my own account? Well okay, I'll play along...

Holy cow! Security check?! Fine fine...

There. Now let's try if it worked... logging in...

Motherfather!!! I activated my account again by just logging in? Isn't there a deactivated permanently button here somewhere??

Okay, let's do the deactivation thing one more time...

So okay, I'm deactivated... again. Now let's ask someone if they can still see my account...

Crap! I'm still on facebook?! You have gotta be kidding me!!!

*****

First of all, the reason I wanted to quit facebook? Because it's eating up a large chunk of my already pathetic, quasi-existent life. You get the email notifications that someone tagged a photo of you, so you check your account and then the whole album. After that, you automatically look to see the status messages of your friends, then you scroll down... then click on the "see other comments" button. Then you scroll down some more, see more comments, then click on "Older posts". But you're not satisfied and check out other people's albums, their trips to wherever the heck they went to and even expand to other links on youtube, flickr, imgur, collegehumor and what-have-yous. Before you know it, it's past your bed time and you wake up late, skipping breakfast and rush your reports for that 9am meeting you hadn't prepared for because you opened facebook as soon as you opened your computer. Thanks Zuckerberg, or whatever the heck your name is.

Then there's the alleged privacy thing. Well, I guess I don't really think it's a problem for me personally, not really being too big on the conspiracy theories. But of course, there are certain rights to privacy that I believe in (which make stalking all the more fun, mind you), so I'm not a big fan of "internet rape" either.

The biggest reason, I suppose, would be that I want to take my life back. There was a time when I wanted to go out to see the world, or my neighborhood, at least. Hang out at a friend's house, see things for myself and make memories that I would cherish for a lifetime. These darn social networking sites have somehow taken the luster out of such discoveries. I see people posting new restaurants, beaches and resorts and I want to go there as well, following the herd. I keep forgetting that some of my favorite places were clumsily stumbled upon, because I got lost or just wandered aimlessly to nowhere.

*****

Okay okay, I can hear your protestations from here. Fine, it's all me, my fault, my bad. I could still do all those things I miss despite facebook, I get it. Still, imagine yourself bored at home, and you flip open your computer and log on to facebook, what do you see? You see what other people have posted, then you think to yourself, that might be fun. And you go out and do it, or reconnect with friends and feel good and think what a productive time you had. Sure I could think of it that way, but I prefer to be so bored and frustrated that I am forced to act on it by actually going out of the house and try to do something on my own. For me (yes me, the selfish prick that I am), that's how life happens, is supposed to happen, serendipitously.

As a pre-deactivation experiment, I vowed not to open facebook for more than an hour a day. I could be bored and doing nothing but I wouldn't touch the computer on this long weekend. So let's recap...

Friday: Work, then went out to whack some balls at the driving range. Then had a couple (okay, more) of beers with a friend and his girlfriend and her sister at some bar that I used to frequent but haven't been to in 7 years.

Saturday: Went for a jog, had lunch at this quaint little Persian joint, did some groceries, then played school bus and fetched people to go to a friend's place for some poker and lots of beer.

Sunday: Did a myriad of chores around the house, arranged the furniture, made a proper lunch, started cleaning my golf clubs, went out for a jog with a friend, stopped by the friend's place to chow on dimsum and watch a DVD.

Monday: Caught up with my reading, made another proper lunch, continued cleaning the golf clubs, went out with some friends for some "girl talk" and dinner, watched a little television then deactivated all my social networking accounts.

Okay, so it wasn't that exciting of a weekend. But the alternate itinerary would look something like this:

Friday: Facebook at work, then get some take out, then facebook at home.

Saturday: Facebook, fry some chow, facebook while woofing down the oily food, facebook some more, then play poker and drink.

Sunday: Facebook, fry some chow, facebook while woofing dawn some more oily food, maybe jog, then facebook.

Monday: Can you guess what I'm doing today?

A little exaggerated, granted, but you kinda get the point, don't you? No? Well, the point is, I get to do more stuff without facebook around as a default activity. Sure, I might spend the whole afternoon just going to the park or a coffee shop, but at least I got out of the house, where I open myself to the opportunity of something, anything out of the ordinary to happen. Even when I'm just at home, freeing myself from the shackles of facebook fun made me give an effort to chores and getting creative with lunch.

The fact is, the hours I've been spending on facebook has been increasing to the point of being an addiction. The most pathetic point of which is the "challenge" to think up a snazzy new status message, or get a great photo to post for others to see, or post links of that great "discovery" you found about a talking dog.

So I guess I lose touch with the hundreds of contacts I had, a tenth (or less) of which I have any actual interactions with. The price of independence, I guess.