It all started with discovering friends reunited which at the time you had to pay to use, you could create a basic profile but to interact or contact anyone you had to pay the subscription. Although there were some people I knew, who slightly abused the small and free "about me" section to message each other, which I did find amusing. Given the small selection of people I knew on there, I surmised that paying a subscription was not worthwhile, although I did check back every so often to see if anyone I wanted to connect with had joined, and was worthy of parting with my money. They never did! Then along came Myspace it was free, it had people I knew on it, and I even made digital friendships with a few people too. The problem with Myspace was the music. Every profile had a "theme tune" and surfing from one page to another would more often than not, lead to a headache. Although I did learn a lot of song intros. The vast amount of "busy" personalised profiles could lead to cranium pain too. The bands ruined it also. At the time I was a regular at the local band haunts, so made friends with and followed some I thought worthy. Then it seemed every band from every venue showed up and they all wanted your attention.
Then the saviour came along. FACEBOOK.
I joined Facebook in the middle of my Myspace stint, mainly because a lot of my long lost school friends showed up on there. Reconnecting with lost friends was a plus, but then my current friends joined, new friends joined, family joined, acquaintances joined. Everyone seemed to join. This was great, people would message each other, share pictures and all seemed reasonably good. Apart from the updates which everyone seemed to hate, I always liked the Facebook of old because it was plain and simple, post my thoughts, read other peoples, look at pictures of what friends had been doing, load up pictures of what I had done. Every update seemed to dilute the posts I would get, and you would seem to have to change your profile and security settings too. Every update I spent more time looking through posts / links / statuses which I just had no interest in. But it was still usable, I would rant my hatred and threaten to leave, but like everyone else, I told myself 'all my friends and family are on here, I am only staying for them'. Then the companies arrived! They would offer you discounts or entry into a competition and all you had to do was like them. Sometimes they would just ask you to like them. This diluted the stream of information in your news feed, even further.
It seemed the bigger Facebook got, and the more they updated it, the worse it became. In the beginning 5 or 10 minutes would be enough to get up to speed and comment on anything worthwhile, towards the end of my stay I could easily be on up to an hour without actually feeling I had discovered anything. Posts became more and more irrelevant, and they spread too, people who previously made funny and interesting posts, were now posting banal updates. I know for some people Timeline was unwelcome, but I will admit that I did like it. The thing is although I like Timeline, I hated everything Facebook had become, a data mining time sink. The one thing I think pushed me over the edge was all the updates that required me to install an app to view them and there seemed no way to stop them.
I decided I would leave Facebook about a month ago, and not wanting to be hasty I deactivated my account, with the intention of leaving it two weeks to see what it was like to be 'off the grid'. I lasted four days. In only four days I realised Facebook just isn't needed. If anything having it there just gets in the way of life. I only reactivated my account because I needed to to delete it. Instead of connecting with people in real life, we have become accustomed to just checking on Facebook. If you have contemplated leaving Facebook I urge you to just try deactivating it and leaving it for a while, just see for yourself what it is like. Oh, and stop telling yourself your only on it because your friends are! There are other ways to connect. After all do you really call, knowing when your 'friend' is in bed, that they like Spam, that they listened to Captain Beefheart on Spotify or watched some Fawlty Towers on Netflix, Connecting? I just found Facebook to be an overload of useless information towards the end, something which I think will only increase, now it has stock holders demanding profit. Time to move on, I say.
I joined Facebook in the middle of my Myspace stint, mainly because a lot of my long lost school friends showed up on there. Reconnecting with lost friends was a plus, but then my current friends joined, new friends joined, family joined, acquaintances joined. Everyone seemed to join. This was great, people would message each other, share pictures and all seemed reasonably good. Apart from the updates which everyone seemed to hate, I always liked the Facebook of old because it was plain and simple, post my thoughts, read other peoples, look at pictures of what friends had been doing, load up pictures of what I had done. Every update seemed to dilute the posts I would get, and you would seem to have to change your profile and security settings too. Every update I spent more time looking through posts / links / statuses which I just had no interest in. But it was still usable, I would rant my hatred and threaten to leave, but like everyone else, I told myself 'all my friends and family are on here, I am only staying for them'. Then the companies arrived! They would offer you discounts or entry into a competition and all you had to do was like them. Sometimes they would just ask you to like them. This diluted the stream of information in your news feed, even further.
It seemed the bigger Facebook got, and the more they updated it, the worse it became. In the beginning 5 or 10 minutes would be enough to get up to speed and comment on anything worthwhile, towards the end of my stay I could easily be on up to an hour without actually feeling I had discovered anything. Posts became more and more irrelevant, and they spread too, people who previously made funny and interesting posts, were now posting banal updates. I know for some people Timeline was unwelcome, but I will admit that I did like it. The thing is although I like Timeline, I hated everything Facebook had become, a data mining time sink. The one thing I think pushed me over the edge was all the updates that required me to install an app to view them and there seemed no way to stop them.
I decided I would leave Facebook about a month ago, and not wanting to be hasty I deactivated my account, with the intention of leaving it two weeks to see what it was like to be 'off the grid'. I lasted four days. In only four days I realised Facebook just isn't needed. If anything having it there just gets in the way of life. I only reactivated my account because I needed to to delete it. Instead of connecting with people in real life, we have become accustomed to just checking on Facebook. If you have contemplated leaving Facebook I urge you to just try deactivating it and leaving it for a while, just see for yourself what it is like. Oh, and stop telling yourself your only on it because your friends are! There are other ways to connect. After all do you really call, knowing when your 'friend' is in bed, that they like Spam, that they listened to Captain Beefheart on Spotify or watched some Fawlty Towers on Netflix, Connecting? I just found Facebook to be an overload of useless information towards the end, something which I think will only increase, now it has stock holders demanding profit. Time to move on, I say.
