Breaking Up with Facebook

During Mardi Gras break of my junior year of college I was meandering down a street in the French Quater vastly underdressed for the weather and ran into one of my friends from high school. I'm sure we talked for a few minutes or so, but all I remember was her telling me to "facebook" her. I was pretty drunk and hadn't heard of facebook--this was like 6mos to a year after Zuckerberg had his techie aha moment in his dorm and facebook was only available on a few campuses then--so I dismissed what she told me until another friend later that night said the same thing. A few days later I Googled facebook, saw that LSU was indeed on the cool list and made my page. The snarky girl inside of me fell instantly in love with this online gossip mill that connected me to people I knew, kinda knew, wanted to know and had no inclination to get to know. Fast forward a couple of years and that same need to know has me wanting to run screaming from the site.

Just like any relationship, my relationship with facebook started out innocent enough and full of time spent swooning over the pages--and getting mine down to a science--when I should have been paying attention in class. Before high schoolers and randoms with an email address could join, the exclusivity of facebook meant that only my classmates, colleagues and actual friends could friend me. I was swept up in being connected to girls I'd lost touch with since graduating high school--I was living post-Katrina and needed that connection to home-- nd loved that I could make groups for classes, student organizations and my inner circle. It was like someone put together the best parts of AIM and myspace and left out the creepiness. Until it got creepy when some guy who was friends with all of my friends but had never seen me in real life decided to start chatting me up. (I knew that posting an actual picture of myself was a bad idea, which is why to this day I have my privacy on lock and rarely use pictures of myself as my profile picture.) It would have been all good if it stopped there but then this person told friends of friends that he waas in love with me--b*sh I don't know you--and all kinds of other weird stuff. But sadly, that was only the beginning of the creepy.

Eisenberg is a better Zuckerberg than Zuckerberg lol

Facebook grew,  and eventually let everyone and my mom join facebook as long as they had an active email account. My inbox flooded with friend requests from people I didn't know or want to know and my timeline began to fill up with images and topics that made me cringe. I don't care about your religious/political views, I wish you were acquainted with grammer, I don't want to see your baby baking or the meal you cooked, I am not donating to your cause, I don't live in your state to go to your event and in general I don't care...if I did I would call/text/email/write/smoke signal you. The red flags of the dangers of over sharing began to pop up and I stopped accepting friend requests from most people. Relationship turning sour, I began to plan my exit...which is exactly where this finds me. 

On one hand, I'm a blogger who is all over the internets and I love to shameless promote myself which is why I log on to facebook in the first place. On the other hand-- that would be my left hand--I do not like the superficial level of connectedness that it perpetuates. Just because we are fiends on facebook does not mean you know thing the first about my life--unless I'm an over sharer and in that case you know waaaaay too much. Seriously, my relationship status, posted pictures, links and quotes and my likes and dislikes aren't me. If you wanted to know me, and more importantly I wanted to know you, we would actually talk...like on the phone. The connection that you have with me online is not only superficial but contrived by me to sell whatever I'm selling just like you're selling whatever you're selling. Sadly, 80% of my "friends" on facebook are selling things that I would never buy. All of this leaves me feeling both torn and confused, facebook helps contribute to my profile online and my side hustle but it grosses me out...much like a boyfriend that you've outgrown that you love because he's comfy and familiar but since he let himself go and started acting like a major douche you can't bring yourself to kiss him let alone practice making babies with him. 

While I haven't had the "it's not you, it's me" talk with FB just yet, I know its coming. Especially since all those food and fetus pics make me want to gag, and the thought of people that I would avoid at all costs in real life knowing my life bothers the heck out me--that's the reason I rarely post anything personal that and the fact that both of my parents and several aunts, uncles and cousins are my "friends" now and most of them would flip their shit if they knew how I felt about God, politics, music, art, movies, men and pretty much everything else.



 
John Legend - I Used To Love You by mgl_la