We’re approaching my 3 year anniversary of pulling the plug on my Facebook account.  Yes, I’m that one or two people you have in your social circle who are not on Facebook.  You know, the person that you preface a sentence with the phrase, “I know you’re not on Facebook, but…”.  

Rachel and I recently celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary.   It’s amazing that I lucked out by finding someone crazy enough to put up with me for 10 years.  She’s great.  Hey, our relationship started almost 11 years ago in Facebook.  It started with Rachel friending me nearly a decade since the last time I talked to her.  She was living 5 hours away from me at the time.  The friend request transitioned into texting and eventually meeting up.  We dated 2 months, 23 days before I proposed to her.  So yeah, I have some fond memories of Facebook.  

Over the years, Facebook evolved.  Some of us saw it earlier than me, some have seen it since and some will figure it out later.  Initially, cool platform.  I’ve always felt a bit out of touch from extended family as I ended up in Kansas and most of my extended family is in Montana or New Mexico. I was able to see what they were up to and periodically and have short message conversations.  The same thing occurred with friends that I’ve lost touch with over the years.  Some of these online reunions evolved into reconnecting in person.  I’m sure this part of the story is relatable. 

Eventually everyone was Facebook.  While growing, Facebook begins making changes to drive more advertising revenue.  All of the changes that occurred were to drive consumers to spend more time on the platform.  This led to one of my least favorite features, the “share” button.  That’s where we were sucked in even more.  Oh, we also now had these new devices called smart phones.  Check this out bro, you can check your Facebook anywhere in the world!  Do you remember when that was not the case?

Prior to the share button, you were sharing your own content via the status update or photos/videos.  You could share links, but it took the effort of copying and pasting the hyperlink.  If you put that effort into it, you thoroughly read what you were sharing.  People were posting their own content instead of the tribal content that floods newsfeeds today.  You didn’t share only because it was your favorite political writer or comedian.  You didn’t share only because the headline asserted something you believed in.  No, you read it first and then shared.  And if you believed in it enough, you did the copy/paste and inserted your own commentary.

Sharing got out of control.  I had at least 10 friends that would “share” the posts from George Tekai or “Don’t Poke the Bear” literally every day.  Dude, if I wanted to see what George Tekai was sharing, I would just hit the “Like” button and have it in my feed.  Stop it.  (Ok, some of them were hilarious….)

As time would go on, we’d see some political nonsense.  I love a well thought out debate as long as it exists with civil discourse.  Facebook ruined that.  Friends on the right were sharing daily Fox News stuff and those on the left with their Huffington Post articles.  It got worse.  Eventually there would be web sites like “American News” that was nothing but conservative commentary and speculation with a headline that presented itself as news.  Bleh.  The liberals did the same with “American News X”.  Just like that, my news feed evolved from status updates and vacation photos to ongoing op-ed pieces disguised as news.  I started seeing people differently.  It was not cool.

As the constant sharing and fake news started to clutter my feed, Facebook changed the news feed algorithm.  The 2006 Facebook displayed everything in chronological order.  Not anymore.  I would pull out my phone, look at my feed and only see nonsense.  At the same time, it was not serving me content posted by friends and family.  I had to search all of that out and sometimes missed something that I would have been interested in seeing.  I was no longer being served the content that drove me to opening the account to begin with.

I finally broke at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon.  My cell phone battery was low after a full charge in the morning.  I looked at the battery consumption per app and figured out that I had spent 2.5 hours on Facebook by 2pm.  The thing was, I didn’t spend 2.5 hours straight on Facebook.  I spent several sessions of 3-5 minutes on Facebook that accumulated to 2.5 hours.  What a waste.  That is time I could have spent with my family or doing chores around the house.  I could have been working out or volunteering my time to a local, charitable cause.  Nope, I was mindlessly reading the same nonsense over and over again that gave me no entertainment or meaningful value.  I was sucked into a black hole of nothing. 

I shut it off.

3 years later it is still off.

I haven’t missed it at all since then, aside a couple of times.  One of those times were when pictures were taken over a 4-day weekend when my youngest sister got married.  We had dozens of family members in from out of town, some of them have never visited Wichita.  I didn’t see any of the pictures.  The only other time I have missed it is when there is a death.  I lost 3 friends in 2017 who left this planet too premature.  I lost a few family members in 2018.  Several former co-workers and friends of the past have also passed away since shutting it off.  For many days after each death, I’ve missed out on seeing photos and memories posted.  My moments of missing Facebook were short-lived and I moved on.

There are other inconveniences.  Do you know how many times I get invited to something last minute because the organizer forgot to invite me?  Yeah, all events are coordinated on Facebook.  I remember going to an out of town wedding in 2017 during a rain storm.  Everyone attending the wedding received a message prior to stating that the wedding would be outside and to bring an umbrella.  I didn’t get the message.  Oh, there have been annual events hosted by friends where I didn’t even get the invite, despite attending for multiple years prior to closing Facebook.  I could go on and on…you get the point.

Here is the conflict:  I need Facebook to promote this blog.  My wife’s job would be easier if she had Facebook to make some business contacts that are impossible to do via LinkedIn.  Do we compromise and re-open?

We’ve enjoyed not having Facebook.  Without it, I find much more meaningful conversation when I run into a friend at the grocery.  With Facebook, I know what they had for dinner on the last date night, who they voted for, updates on what is going on with their life, etc.  Without it, we’re striking up the same meaningful conversations that we used to do, prior to social networking becoming part of our world.  We’re certainly more productive.  It is probably not too coincidental that my fitness game increased around the time I shut the stupid thing off. 

Confused Beast.

PS  I miss funny memes.  My meme consumption has gone down 98% since then, LOL.