I Have Left the Facebook
This is no joke, and this is no gimmick. After over three years of faithful use since joining in the Fall of my Freshman year, 2004, I have deactivated my account.
Why I’m Doing This: An Introduction
The reasons are many. Firstly, let me start by paraphrasing something someone else said on why he left facebook:
“The facebook relies on a feeling of disconnection in our generation. It’s success only goes to show how much of a market there was for a tool to reconnect us.”
That was said by a guy named Tom from Lexington who is studying at Oxford this year - originally from Boston College. I forgot his last name, though. In any event, by leaving the Facebook, you are making a proud foreword step for the quality of our generations interaction.
As technology encroaches on our day to day lives and we become increasingly glued to our terminals, our identity becomes more and more synonymous with our on-line actions. Is it now a romantic view that the human can be re-separated from the machine? Perhaps, but there is need now more than ever to reaffirm the processes of natural socialization over on-line socialization, if indeed this is still viewed as valuable to us as people.
Matters of Freedom
It is concerning to me how much of my personal information I have been giving out to a third-party server every day. Essentially, I am telling a server in California intricate details about my friends, family, and interests. I don’t assume anyone really cares, but the issue is none-the-less ideologically troubling.
Distributing information from JamesonWilliams.com is different. Even though the information can be illegally manipulated and redistributed, I have control over when and why I stop being a source for various information. It’s not a matter of fear, really - it’s a matter of having the luxury to host my own information.
Averting Negative Character Traits
The facebook.com is essentially a festering bucket of vanity and insecurity. The online image presented by the individual is more a statement of worth than it is an attribute of style, or a portrayal of objective facts. Indeed, these are interesting social considerations for a sociologist, but really, I just find it all quite filthy. I would prefer to distance myself from that culture in the interest of preserving the fibre of my individual.
Also, the tool poses as a veil over human body language and expression. This creates a misunderstanding of genuity, purpose, and value of human interactions.
I have an addictive personality, and the variable “notifications” reward system of facebook.com is particularly addictive for me. It is a tremendous waste of my time to be refreshing the notifications script every five minutes, like a slot-jockey trying to get a quick fix.
That’s All Fine, Jameson. I Don’t Have a Problem.
Orly?
Some Closing Statements
The facebook is a verminous filth-bucket of proprietary software which is used to exploit the inadequacies of social development in our generation to make advertising profits. It’s fun, and useful and has other positive features, but there are lots of other ways to get the job done. Join me in leaving the facebook.com!
Tags: addictive, advertising, deactivate, distribution, facebook, filth, ideology, information, insecurity, interaction, leaving facebook, lexington, natural, notifications, on-line, proprietary, socialization, vanity
November 28th, 2007 at 12:18 am
I believe your comments regarding the addictive nature of Facebook hold water. Certainly it is a webpage that has extirpated vast amounts of time from my life. This is not to say that this time spent online is necessarily a loss, though. Indeed, I do not believe there is a zero sum relationship between the productiveness of my time and the use of Facebook. Rather I embrace Facebook for its many amenities. I argue friendship is one of the things that makes life worth living and gives meaning to any success or failure one may encounter. If the gestalt of our lives is the sum of our experiences, than friends actually play an important in defining who we are. Perhaps Aristotle put it best: “The polis can exist without the individual, but the individual cannot exist without the polis…If men are separated from the polis, they cease to be men in the same way as a hand ceases to be a hand if cut off from the body…the function of man, the realization of his essence, lies in the achievement of the good life which cannot be lived except in the polis.” The overarching point here is simply that Facebook has allowed me to keep in touch with friends I otherwise would have lost with time: albeit for the most part this is my own fault, but in many cases there was no pragmatic solution for communication (a friend who lives in the Middle East or a group of friends I made in Germany). In the latter of the two cases, Facebook is just as effective and just as sensible as any other means of communication I could have explored and does not settle for any lack of personality (perhaps a hand written letter is more personal, but Facebook allows me to access pictures and videos—something I view as far more personal and brings my friends closer to me than they otherwise would be).
A second qualm I have with your update is Tom’s quote. How would he assess the phone? The radio? The television? To use Facebook as a scapegoat for what you may view as a loss of community solidarity due to technological innovation is both unfairly regressive and also attempts to estrange the internet from other means of mass communication which you seem to view without dubiousness. Or put differently, humans have always sought more effective ways to communicate with one another and the internet is merely another step in the evolution. If it is in human nature to seek more effective means of transmitting information or news, how does the internet alienate itself from this nature? Should we have abandoned the phone because we became dependent on it for communication? Should we abandon the radio or TV because we rely on both for access to news? For that matter, are we not also addicted to the newspaper? To view the internet as unnatural and to abandon it as such seems to expose a regression that ultimately ends in human beings communicating solely by use of voice and in person. This is both counterproductive and, in my view, unnatural given our nature as beings which desire to expand, evolve, compete, and progress.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:17 am
What is jamesonwilliams.com, then, essentially?
November 28th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
JamesonWilliams.com is a vanity domain with many of the same problems as the facebook. I should not allege that my actions are completely consistent. At bare minimum, however, this is a simpler and more individualistic way of going about all of the things I have berated.
At a certain point, a line needs to be drawn between what is what is an acceptable medium for self expression and what is counter-productive. Taking this too far, no information would ever flow, but in the other direction, we’d all be refreshing the facebook notifications page every few moments for hours on end, like I was. Shit was dirty-styles.
If used properly, the facebook is a beneficial tool to maintain contacts that would otherwise not be maintained, it is true. However, I have noted that most of the contacts I have accumulated on facebook are not actually people I care about. It is a self-selecting crowd that takes the time to visit JamesonWilliams.com that are likely individuals I can depend on for meaningful, intellectual, interpersonal discourse.
The matter of facebook as an emerging form of communication in the scope of all of history’s methods of communication is indeed an interesting one. Perhaps not using the facebook is tantamount to not using a telephone given a certain time-translation. However, there have been notable figures who have taken those sorts of stances on media at various times in history.
At the base of the issue is the presentation of socialization through the different real, verbal, or written forms. In-as-much as facebook can be used like a piece of post or email would have been, prior to its mass conception, perhaps it is not so different. However, I believe that the facebook medium has encroached upon the natural (or classical) distribution of written, verbal and physical communication.
In this light, one can preach moderation, reform, or complete abstinence. I have taken the model that radical change should initiate the reform, followed by degradation to an improved equilibrium state thereafter.
Et cetera.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
…so… where’s the poke button?
November 30th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Still in beta testing.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:05 pm
I too left facebook, just a few hours ago actually. I wasn’t fond of their sharing of personal information. It’s funny that I stumble on your post just after I did the same. Facebook - 2.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
False…In the 7 days between the time you Facebook after Jameson, 4,523 more people joined Facebook.
Score:
Jameson/Mat: 2
Facebook: 4521
January 14th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
But what is a man, be he addicted to the Facebook Feed? Is not the righteousness of two far weightier in the eyes of God than the loss of those of little faith? Assuredly, I say unto you: There will be weeping and gnashing of the teeth to those.