Because I'm tired of it. Since deactivating my account last week, the first question I've been asked from friends is "Did you delete FACEBOOK!? Are you okay?" Yeah I'm fuckin' okay.
This is one of many reasons I felt the need to leave. Why did I let this social networking site (now a social brand) become the source of communicating with friends?
When I first made an account with Facebook was back when I was in undergraduate and my university was invited to be Facebook (yes, back when your university was invited to be on Facebook). I took it as a joke and signed up as Angelica la Douche, then a day later I deleted my account. Why? Because I thought it was dumb and I didn't want former classmates from high school to find me and try to request to be "friends" with me. I simply did not care what they were up to. It wasn't until about 3 years later when I decided to join again as suggested by a good friend who had recently moved. The first two days of joining I was overwhelmed by the amount of people requesting to be my friend. Some people I didn't know, but knew them as a friend of a friend who I later end up meeting. It's always awkward when you meet someone and you add, "Oh yeah I think we're Facebook friends." What does that even mean?
I had an amazing art history professor who once had a huge 4 hour debate about the meaning of friends and communication (there wasn't much art in this art history course at all, it was more like a philosophical debate course). He argued that you're only allowed to have 5 true friends and everyone else is just an acquaintance. If you had more friends than that, you're lying to yourself. It's about quality not quantity, am I right!? He also argued that the best way to communicate with your friends is face to face, 2nd was calling them/or writing a letter and the last was texting them. He did not discuss much about social networking because it was slightly before its peak and it was the era of texting. One of my readings for the class was Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra & Simulation. Baudrillard's main argument was everything now is just a hyperreality -- references without no original (a simulacra). Facebook and etc., are simulations of actual human interaction.
All this is not to say that I don't believe Facebook and other forms of social media is not a great tool. It makes communicating a whole lot easier, especially when you have something to say to all of your "friends" or instead of driving around to see your friends. I have good friends living all throughout south Florida, from North Palm Beach to Coral Gables and Facebook made it easy to connect with my friends.
Recently, one night a friend posted and tagged a photograph which led all my friends in the photo (including myself) posting comments at 2 in the morning. After 20+ comments one friend mentioned why were we all on Facebook at 2am instead of actually hanging out and that this was some creepy futurist event. This is when it first dawn on me -- why was I using Facebook? Why was I replacing actual human interaction?
All of these thoughts, from my art history professor to Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra & Simulation to creepy futurist events to Facebook's fucked up privacy policy to people who once hated Facebook (and other social networking sites) who all of the sudden they won't stop posting about their personal life to the simple fact that I've always hated Facebook made me deactivate my account -- for awhile of course. An experiment of sorts but also to get my butt geared on applying for graduate school.
A friend (a real one, not a Facebook one) said that if we become dependent on these tools (social media) then need to get rid of them of our lives that we're just using them incorrectly. I disagree with him, because of two reasons:
1. There's no actual way of correctly using Facebook. You're either on it or you're not.
2. Most people I know who uses Facebook are dependent on it, and if you believe that's the incorrect way of using it then you should deactivate/delete your Facebook account.
