Social Luddite

It took far less will power than I had expected to delete my facebook account after only 6 months or so of operation. I was a late-comer and an-early leaver you might say to the ‘social phenomenon’ as they like to call it.

Many of my friends agree with many of my sentiments about facebook but have yet to make that leap. No doubt because whilst they might agree with some ideas of mine they just don’t swallow the whole argument.

Lists are very unimaginative but then again so too is facebook in many ways, so here’s the list of my arguments, in roughly order of importance.

I spend too many of my waking hours on a computer at work. Another reason to look at the brightly lit conduit of information was not what I needed.

Call me socially inept but I didn’t like the instant level of access people got to your social interactions with all your other friends just by the simple motion of clicking the‘add to friends’ button. The effusive guys at facebook failed to realise that most normal people have a spectrum of friends from best pal right through to acquaintances. This brings up the possibility of many wonderfully awkward scenarios. This is epitomised with the charming advent of ‘tagging’ where of course people take photos, some good, some indeed terrible and then place a tag on you so that all your other ‘friends’ can share and comment on your precious experience. It gets a little more interesting when you’ve pulled a sicky on Monday and your boss fails to appreciate the subtle hilarity of seeing you try to lick your own elbows in the early hours of Sunday morning at the Cross. It seems now that you can police you profile to limit access according to your own discretion, but really that’s just a bit too much effort and I just couldn’t deal with the shitty politics or underlying distrust that would inevitability occur when said individual finds out somehow that they’ve been ‘limited’.

When you do eventually see your beloved friend in 3D, I’ve often wondered what the die hard facebook addicts do…..? After all they should know everything about each other after trawling through the online 15 GB photo albums, wall posts that look like they have been on the wrong end of a blunderbuss and my favourite, the ‘status’ quote. You should now know; what she wore on her 4th day of her holiday to Fiji; what he thought of that guy when he said that thing about her; and how surprised he was when he produced a poo the size of a coke can. The list goes on. Technically you should have nothing to talk about. What fun is that now.

To understand a bit more of psychology of where I’m coming from, read Ben Elton’s fictional ‘Blind Faith’. Whilst it was not the trigger for my departure from facebook it sure acted as a catalyst. Happy reading.