In the words of a 1st century new media evangelist,
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
After much thought and perusal of the interwebs to observe how trusted friends use the site, I cancelled my Facebook account for 3 reasons:
1. Too many phone lines, not enough calls.
If it’s your birthday, I want to remember because I once cared enough to ask you, took note of the date, then acted in a real way to help you celebrate your life. I don’t want to be one of the drones that starts each morning with a wall-plastering exercise of birthday cheer to random strangers. When I look back through the Facebook page of a friend who passed at his own beckoning, I see signals–like the bobbing flag of a diver–that alluded to his impending dive. But his remarks were just a few drops in the stream and I missed them. I missed him.
2. Too much clicking, not enough actual sharing.
If you are enjoying a game or find something terrific, I don’t want to miss out on sharing your discovery … but I do on Facebook because you play so many games and think so much stuff is awesome that I had to block you from my stream. I don’t think that’s a fair answer but it seemed to be the only workable one in an environment where everybody wants to go viral more than they want to make friends.
3. Uncertain privacy.
On the business side, when Facebook digs for ways to make more money, user privacy is a top candidate to get the axe. On the personal side, I find it exhausting to watch single friends couple, fill a few Facebook photo albums with cute pics, then bail on each other in a cloud of wall posts. Must we prematurely throw everything out in the open like Dickinson’s frog? The only comparable real-world example I can recall is that of an acquaintance returning presents from a baby shower after deciding to have an abortion. The awkwardness was palpable.
Facebook seems to be more about building glass houses than it is about inviting friends over for dinner.
Perhaps your experience has been different. Perhaps you’ve found a truly sustainable way to connect with thousands of people across multiple platforms. Even if I knew of a way to connect with thousands in a mutually fulfilling way, I’m not sure I would. I don’t like being spread too thin. When you step into my life, I’d prefer your experience to be more like stepping into a TARDIS than any massive shopping complex. But having something be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside isn’t easy online. We’ve still got two pieces of glass between us. I’m hoping that by stepping away from Facebook I’ll be able to remove some of the distracting smudges on that glass.
Perhaps you’ll be able to see me a bit better then? I hope so.
Enough about me! What does all this lead you to say? I’m glad for your thoughts.
I totally agree with you Seth. I never have got that involved with FB, especially when all those games started cluttering my feed. And the demands for flowers, mafia tools, etc. just became exhausting. At least on twitter, I have a choice to follow you, or not, without the demands. Much lighter environment.
I’m picking up what you’re putting down. It seems that facebook is becoming an ongoing exercise in filtering. I can’t stand all of the games that are sync’d through the API. But at the same time, it seems like the most comfortable of all the social media sites. It’s easy to share and engage…if you can just filter out all the crap.
It’s only a matter of time until the fascination wears off, and we all realize that there is no perfect social platform and no substitute for actual face to face human connection. Until then we’re all content with being stylized versions of ourselves.
The only thing more neurotic (and spammy) than Facebook,
is FriendFeed.
First, facebook is wonderful to help staying in touch with some people. The key is staying in touch and not connecting there. As long as I do not clutter your account with everyone and each app, I can handle it, and find it quite useful. More useful than twitter. Sure, Farmville is annoying. The sane limit of active facebook friends is around 20-40 for me, so it is like 100-200 in total or so. I would not be able to handle much more.
That leads to second. Whom you want to stay in touch with… Everyone? That is not a correct answer for me. I think FB is good to communicate with people from the past that are important and live too far away for daily communication – clasmates, friends that moved, relatives in other cities/countries/etc.
And third.
I think I have seen a tweet by you that suggests connecting with you on FB. So I am not that surprised that you burned out on FB.
I don’t think it was a burn out so much as a change in direction. I still find Twitter quite useful and between blogs & email, Facebook was adding redundancy to the way I communicate with people I know. Instead of getting email notifications, I just get email now. =)
I still prefer FB for stalking other people albums and local events. There are other services, but they are not satisfactory here.
However, I understand your point.
I totally agree with what you’re saying and have almost deleted my account several times. Still unsure as to why I don’t as I seem to learn more about someone high score or the results of endless quizzes. I suppose I find a way to make it still useful. I do find myself not updating my status very often and sometimes have to sit and think of what I could write that someone else may even care about knowing. Keep up posts like this as it gets people really thinking how services like Facebook actually makes their life better and/or more cumbersome!
I actually quit Facebook a while ago.Mainly because I was never on it. I’d joined Classmates.com before Facebook to reconnect with old school friends so I didnt need Facebook for that purpose. I use email and Skype to communicate with people I talk to on a regular basis. People sure are astounded and horrified when they find out I dont have a Facebook account though. It’s like I’m some oddity. “You mean you don’t have a Facebook account?? EVERYBODY’S on Facebook” Like you I also found too many distractions on FB. I much prefer twitter for meeting interesting people & email for longer conversations. I’m not a blogger, social media expert or in advertising (I’m a biologist) but I enjoy the interesting,no bs posts from you & @smashadv. They always make me think:)
Um, saying you quit Facebook without ever having an account is a bit like me saying I quit smoking crack when I’ve never actually tried it. =P
I completely agree with you about email! =)
I did have an account I was just never there. It sat there:)I finally deleted it
I agree with @giedrius “Facebook is wonderful to help staying in touch with some people. The key is staying in touch and not connecting there.”
I personally only use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends. I use the security settings to lock my account down as much as possible, and encourage all my family and friends to do the same.
I do not accept requests from people I do not know or go looking for new connections, I do not find Facebook the best platform (for me anyway) to do that.
Agreed, Facebook can be a bit much to handle at times, but for me Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with my family and friends, almost on a daily basis.
I think this is a better reflection of your personal result of facebook, and not necessarily what it has to offer. This article sounds like someone blaming their TV for the cable not coming through; or more directly, user error. Facebook is what you make it, and there are tools such as lite.facebook.com which completely removes the app updates.
Second, you can, as you said, remove people from your feed. However, there is the dilemma of missing the worth of their non-app updates (or what have you) so instead of confronting the person on being annoying, passive-aggressive behavior is instead used which apparently results in justifying removing yourself entirely.
Third, there are plenty of other objects which can remind you of birthdays. One of which I believe is called a wall calendar, and has been around for quite some time before computers. The method of communication, however, is what makes or breaks the congratulatory remarks; taking someone out for a drink or some other such social event due to their birthday is a kind gesture, regardless of what reminded you to do it.
I suppose what it boils down to is strength of will. Some people can’t say no, and when their boss / person they met once / friend of a friend of a friend makes a friend request or suggests you become a fan of something, you can’t say no. I suppose your points and solution makes sense in such a mindset, but I’ll stick to using Facebook to create the network I want to have, and not the other way around.
Seth, you are a sane voice in the madding crowd.
I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg envisioned Farmville catching on like it has when he created the site. But Facebook, at least for me, is a legit way to keep in touch with people whom I don’t see on a regular basis, but want to stay in touch with. Make sense?
If I want to interact with them, I often find that a message into their Facebook inbox is a lot more efficient (and more likely to reach them) than an e-mail.
So, for that purpose, it fits the bill.
(And stalking ex-girlfriends is soooo much easier, too.)
I use FB to connect with people I know (as in went to school with, work/ed with) and Twitter to connect with like-minded people I don’t know and cannot reasonable meet face-to-face, like you for instance.
The people I connect with on FB, I knew once and cared about deeply but fell out of touch with (moving all over creation). I like seeing them on vacation and seeing their kids catch fish, all quietly, enjoying the humanity I am loosely but certainly connected to. Feeling that connection is a solitary act, though. But it makes me a better person, more in touch with my past and thus my present.
I do write to them and I do send them warm (heartfelt) regards on their birthdays. And with many of them I exchange a few messages per year.
I see why you feel the way you do, I think. I could even see me feeling that way. But somehow, I don’t.
Cheers to finding what works,
Dow
Yeah, I see what you are saying. I don’t want to cancel mine because I want to see where they go with it. Since it is the biggest social network, it just might be pretty important one day, you know? But I don’t use it at all anymore. I find better interaction on Twitter with strangers than on Facebook with people who are in some strange sense (not really related to the common use of the word) “friends.”
As in all things…it’s the beginnings and the ends, that are the most interesting…
*unlike* Aww no way! I think I’d cancel Twitter over Facebook, if I had to (yikes) I see what you mean though, considering the content you create. Respectable. Catch ya elsewhere!
If you’ve followed any of my Facebook comments on Twitter you are likely unsurprised that I am commenting here. I was selective about what I posted to Facebook when I had an account. I finally deleted my account for good in August 2008 when a friend posted pictures of me and linked them to my page. There was nothing particularly bad about the photographs but I did not want them linked to my account, I could not unlink them (even though Facebook provides this feature) and Facebook customer support would not assist me. I saw this as the first instance where control of my own account had been wrested from me and I could imagine other instances with worse potential. I deleted all the content from my page and only then did I delete my account.
Two of the comments left here use the term stalk or stalking. I’m sure this is used in a joking fashion but that concerns me, too. There are times I voluntarily cede my privacy on Twitter but I’m careful when and about which things I release. All the same, any one wanting to know my minute by minute activity would have to wade through many tweets & hope I was not deliberately posting something time delayed to prevent harassment. There is a lot of information on the web about all of us. I don’t feel a need to add to this information more than is necessary or desirable on my part.
[...] Seth Simonds recently did an article called “Why I canceled my Facebook account.” [...]
I’m with you.
Watching people comment on their every move kept me in touch, but I wasn’t communicating with them – just reading their updates. I wasn’t involved in their life and they weren’t in mine.
I may as well be watching TMZ and calling Jay-Z my friend.
For me, Facebook is primarily about interacting with my family. I’ve connected with other people there because I thought it would be fun, but mostly it’s to hear the daily stuff going on with my sisters, my brother and their families. Because it’s helped bring us closer together, I won’t leave it unless they do (although they all know better than to try to get me to participate in their farms). But I love my hit and run conversations on Twitter, too. I’m in both places when I can be and in neither place when I must do something else. It works for me.