A Step In The Right Direction
September 24th, 2009Facebook has to be the most revolutionary and boundary-defying product of technology to come along since the cell phone ring that was heard in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It brings people together and turns the internet into one giant cocktail party. It’s awesome. It rocks. And it sucks.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy for you, but I knew there would come a time when even you, Miss “my life is an open book” would draw the conclusion that too much is indeed, simply too much. You know I speak from experience. You surely remember the month of my life where Facebook owned a big piece of me.
I was the anti-me. I LOVED Facebook. I couldn’t wait to post on the walls of people I never cared about and tinkered with my profile hourly. But I ran out of gas fast. Random info quickly became too much info; that one friend from high school suddenly became three douche-bags from high school who were still douche-bags. Romantic confessions from various women turned quickly into one random gay dude I worked with over a decade ago posting about cuddling under the covers with his boyfriend. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I went from the Facebook penthouse to the Facebook outhouse in the span of a week. I shut it down, and never looked back.
In your case, it’s more of a shame because you were so good at Facebook. Remember when my I told you our mutual friend had gotten engaged and you went to his page and his relationship status said “single?” Or the time you checked out an old lover’s page and he had posted a picture of the woman he’d picked over you? Remember how good you felt when you saw she was non-descript… average… plain? And let’s not forget the time – well, you know.
There will be weak moments ahead for you. As they say, once an addict, always an addict. If you’re not one Clorox wipe away from cleaning the exact same spot again or one spell-check away from blowing up your computer, you might still find yourself one urge-to-update away from reactivating your account.
So if you’re feeling weak, remind yourself of the time you were stalked by that loser from work. Remind yourself of those hundreds of “friends” you don’t really care about. Yes, you will miss Facebook – just like we always miss that lover who made us feel so damn good – without making us feel the least bit better.
Current status: Over it.
