Facebook withdrawal

[1durphul]

Today I got on "Ello". Which apparently is where everybody is fleeing to from Facebook. It's very basic compared to Facebook, but I think that's a good thing. Just about the only thing I'd want is groups like Tribe had.

Anyway, I have invites, PM me if you'd like one.

[1durphul]

In the grand tradition of 3playa, I'm not creating a new thread when a perfectly good old thread exists...

So, I'm doing this again, I deactivated my Facebook account about 3 days ago. It is so crazy going back and reading through this thread and finding myself having the *EXACT* same thoughts as I did the last time. Literally the same. I should stay off this time though, there is no Burning Man camp planning page on Facebook this time beckoning me back.

[Skuzzy61]

This thread was an interesting read, for me. I have never had any kind of social account nor have I ever had a smart phone, so a lot of this is pretty foreign to me, but still interesting.

[Token]

I have a hate/hate relationship with Facebook. I despise it.

Buuuut, I live in wildfire country in the CA Sierra Foothills, so I actually have a legit reason to use FB to stay informed on that front.

It seems to be the most prolific source of information for wildfires. Some of it is very good, moderated, with some highly skilled folks.

So, I turned off as much blather as I could, only log into the groups I care about, and grind my teeth at all the stupid FB throws at me.

FB is a means to an end, not the "solitaire" of the new millennium, at least for my tastes.

[1durphul]

This thread was an interesting read, for me. I have never had any kind of social account nor have I ever had a smart phone, so a lot of this is pretty foreign to me, but still interesting.

That's interesting that you've never had a smartphone. I've thought about buying a regular mobile phone for a while, but I've come to realize that for any sort of travel I'd be missing a lot of convenience features, especially now that I have T-mobile and I can travel pretty much anywhere on earth, turn my phone on, and have unlimited free data. It removes some of the uncertainty of when I step off a plane in another country that I'll be able to get to my hotel/rental. When I think about my travels, the most stressful (and on one occasion frightening) experiences I've had were when I got to a new country, in a city I've never been to before, stepping out of an airport or train station that inexplicably didn't sell any maps of their own city. That's not a problem now, just take my phone out and use maps to get where I'm going, or message the people I'm meeting up with to find them. I can even drop a pin on a map and send it to my friends if I need them to find me.

[1durphul]

I have a hate/hate relationship with Facebook. I despise it.

Buuuut, I live in wildfire country in the CA Sierra Foothills, so I actually have a legit reason to use FB to stay informed on that front.

It seems to be the most prolific source of information for wildfires. Some of it is very good, moderated, with some highly skilled folks.

So, I turned off as much blather as I could, only log into the groups I care about, and grind my teeth at all the stupid FB throws at me.

FB is a means to an end, not the "solitaire" of the new millennium, at least for my tastes.

I feel like FB's status/wall used to be significantly better than the shit parade that was MySpace, back when FB wasn't open to the general public and you had to have a corporate email address or a college email address. Even when my friends who didn't have either of those, and who were most likely to have horrifying shit shows of stupid for MySpace pages transitioned over to Facebook, their feeds seemed be of a higher quality than they had had before on MySpace. Of course they regressed though and found ways to post meme images instead of comments on every single status message they reply to. When I think back about it, perhaps it was apps like Farmville and also the ability to "share" something that wasn't something directly created by the individual sharing it (like a video from one of those humor aggregator pages on Facebook). If I could go back to a Facebook feed that only has status messages from friends or images/videos they directly uploaded themselves, that would be a Facebook I'd want to use again.

[FlyingMonkey]

Social media sites were discovered to be consuming at least 40% of the bandwidth at my work so they are blocked now. I find checking once or twice a week is fine & by now I could (almost) get along without it. I do use it to stay connected to the burner community & our regional. I have stopped posting anything myself just out of a general mistrust for F-Book. Their complete disregard for privacy has jaded my participation.

You should know that there is something you can opt out of in order to opt out of it.....Just say'n. When all my contacts were sucked out of my phone & put in my profile I was pissed. I don't trust something that big & corporate to do the right thing with my information. My profile is complete & intentional junk data now & I am 103 years old.

[1durphul]

I was talking with a friend today about the general lowering of the bar for websites we used to love. Very few websites that used to appeal to me for quality of their articles still do. Salon for example used to write amazing articles. Now it's all click bait articles. I mean, check this oddity out, it's a capture of Salon from some day in 1999: http://www.salon1999.com and compare it to now, nothing but finger wagging articles on today's Salon.

I'm wondering if maybe this is an unintended consequence of trying to grab article views through Facebook walls? More reason to stay away. I don't want to feed that beast.

[1durphul]

I thought about logging into Facebook last night while a bit tipsy from drinking with friends.

But then I realized it would probably be nothing but Ryan Lochte Is A Liar, or Ryan Lochte Shows His White/Male/Whatever Privilege posts and decided it just wasn't something I was interested in spending time on. That's such a great thing to realize.

I also added several lines to my hosts file in my computer to redirect me from Facebook to my browser's start page. Now when I type in facebook it takes me somewhere else. I added a similar line for HuffingtonPost which has gone from a wonderful news source a decade ago to just a mega clickbait site.

P.S. I hope you guys don't mind me replying to this even though others aren't, it's helping me stay off the crack.

[trilobyte]

I'm not sure what's to feel withdrawals about, just reading about the withdrawals seems like enough of a reminder of why to stay away.

Of course, the thing to remember is that to some degree, you curate what you see in your feed. I have a lot of friends who are wonderful people, but post lots and lots of noise (parroting news stories and meme garbage). Unfollow them. I think there's an option to 'see less from ___" but personally I think that if a person is only posting junk, it's best not to read any of it. You can still stay connected and message each other and go actively visit their page if you want to catch up, but less noise in your feed.

During political cycles (like this one) I needed to unfollow some awesome people because of the frequency of their political postings. Friends who know me know that I like to do my own research and make my own decisions and have a low tolerance for that stuff. After the election in November I'll revisit my friends list and re-follow them.

Right now, I'm doing my best to avoid the site so I can try and stay focused on getting the last minute stuff done and try and keep up with the ticket boards. I'm also trying to avoid spoilers - several of my friends are on-site with their departments and projects, and while I appreciate them taking the time to share some of their awesome pics, I want to avoid too many surprises