This is a short post. My long postponed experiment with facebook absistence finally has paid off. I did really spend a month without logging in. This seems incredibly wussy by my own standards as I do set quite larger than life goals for myself and my followers. But tell you what, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. And I do mean a successful experiment because let’s be honest, how many of us that plan to quit facebook really quit it?
I mean seriously, it’s like a really frustrated and lonely guest barging in on every conversation in a party and loudly announcing that he will never return because of the other guest’s negligence and self-indulgent ignorance and then storming out with a goodbye, only to return in a few minutes to share with others something strange or remarkable. It’s not actually leaving, it’s more like a cry for attention.
Facebook was made with the sole intention of creating an all-encompassing presence. The blue and white colors of the sky aren’t just design choices, they are subliminal conditioning. People have been logging in for so long that a few human beings have passed on leaving their facebook accounts behind them. A few of my own friends are dead for a while now, I still kept wishing them birthdays and pay my respect to them in messages. It’s the same with other people. One day perhaps we’ll die and people will remember us by what we left on our facebook walls.
The idea of a self-expression and social networking platform was so damn huge that most websites especially facebook has a built in facebook record data copy downloader built in the settings system. It’s in case people are preparing for end-of-the-world scenarios or perhaps when they wish to have a nostalgic memento to get back to once in a while every day. Which in turn gave me the idea of doing this little experiment on my own.
I have been a loner, and I have been around loners and I know what it is to slam facebook as a fake and pretentious personal propaganda machine where people are complete ignorant and narcissistic idiots because we ourselves didn’t get any of the aforementioned attention. And I have also been an observer and writer, which made me suspect that it might just all be more than my own excuses to be a recluse. I discovered that I too was an addict.
We won’t even realize it, but facebook for most of us has become an anchor in the ocean of daily internet usage. Our first page, our first reference, the place where we begin our search for anything exotic or interesting or funny every day. And as I hoisted my anchor and blew my lubbers, I discovered that one can make other anchors too if one chooses to. One can stop allowing stimulus to dictate our choice and be mature human beings. And that’s how you make healthy life choices.
Until next time.
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