The Fine Art of Facebook Immolation
Having wanted to end my relationship with the facebook for some time, I have finally committed to the proper course of action. I can't really say why I felt a need to cut this particular social tether, but my reasons are somewhere inside of my feelings of frustration at baroque privacy settings, the constant need on the part of Zucker and co. to redesign a working product ad nauseum, and my own discomfort at my developing habit of whiling away the minutes traipsing through the profiles of folks whom I am barely aquainted with, much less "friends." As an aside, the entire facebook terminology has worn me down: I don't have 300+ friends, yet a look at my profile before this morning would have indicated as much.
To be sure, my urge is not unique. The desire by a portion of the user base to remove themselves from facebook is a growing sentiment in the digital culture. Most recently, I have found The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, a site that does a remarkably complete job of erasing one's entire facebook footprint, leaving only a photo of a noose and a note to the virtual world in its place. While I admit to being intrigued with such a complete destruction of the virtual self, I also admit that it is a bit too extreme a course of action for me to follow, at least at current.
The bitter reality of the situation is that there are certain aspects of facebook that I like. The utility of having a spot where family or friends (of the actual kind) can go to contact me is something that I find very useful. It is also nice to have a soapbox from which my twitterings and blog posts like this one are broadcast to a larger audience than the typical internet echo chamber.
Of course, the typical facebook experience subsumes these two utilitarian aspects into something much larger, and far more ugly. How much of a typical facebook experience consists of reading about the things that one's "friends" have done on facebook? Quizzes taken, questions answered, comments made. Likewise, I am not particularly interested in joining any of the various online games that spread around facebook like social viruses. Fantastic for you that you get an extra virtual acre of land to farm, and lovely that you have found a virtual orphaned sheep. I don't really want to know about it, nor do I have any particular desire to commit more of my time to such pursuits.
So it is that after measured consideration, I have embarked on a campaign of facebook reduction, with the intent of diminishing my profile to the point that I no longer need to visit, ever. While I do not have the stones to go full hog and press the virtual suicide machine 'on' button, I would like to think that the course of action that I am following (and which I delineate below) will get me to a very similar place:
- Unify the definition of "friends": A fan of consistency, I have eliminated every facebook "friend" that isn't, in fact, a friend: Family members and people that I am friendly with. Goodbye (most) co-workers, their spouses and (all) former students. If I haven't spoken to you in the past six months, you probably won't miss me when I'm gone. This move alone removed ~250 facebook connections.
- Remove photos: Deleted. Plain and simple. I also went through and removed my tags from other pictures. I think I am now featured in 10 photos.
- Change notification settings: I am no longer notified whenever anything happens on my page. Comment on a status update? I won't know. Send me a message? Regrettably, there is no way to opt out of this notification that I am aware of. Which brings me to #4
- Let folks know: Go to my page and below my photo, you will see a polite note explaining what I have done and requesting that you contact me through non-facebook channels.
That's it. Pretty simple, actually. There is a certain joy in pruning ninety percent of one's virtual connections. My status updates, tied to my twitter feed and blog, will continue to update without any conscious effort on my part (in fact, this has been the case for a year now). Family and friends can continue to access me through facebook as they see fit. Anyone else who needs to contact me can do so using only a simple google search for my name.
Facebook immolation. An idea whose time has come.
