Farewell, Facebook

Jess and Craig deleted their Facebooks near the end of this Summer. I was slightly peeved, because I have always gotten annoyed with people retracting from Facebook only to be different in some capacity,but alas, I have finally seen the error of my ways. They are right. I must be leaving Facebook.

The short and totally uninteresting reason is that I want to have more time. I am not the person that spends even an hour a day on Facebook, but if I add up all of the time I spend on Facebook it is still formidable. I can get lost staring at it, when I could be studying, reading, or anything else. I waste time on twitter as well, but most of that time is on the El or the elevator. I look through the Royals tweets, see what HipsterMermaid has said and connect with friends. With that I feel like I'm interacting with people. I'm on Google+ currently, but I spend no time on it. At present, it is just an extension of my Gmail account. I only say these things though to get people off my back about my other internet usage and to explain how I'm not a hypocrite. I will become a much more effective human being post-Facebook. If the other sites start to distract me, then I will delete them to. At present, they are still innocent fun. Not to mention, there are many obvious differences between a twitter, a blog and Facebook.

The other loftier reason is wrapped up in the reason that I also had reservations for deleting my Facebook. I though that in deleting my Facebook I would be losing a lot of positive things. I would no longer have 1,251 pictures, instant connection to 740 people, or a way of chatting with the ten people I care to chat with. I was losing this extension of myself. I do not only exist on the internet, but I have invested a lot of me into the internet. I will be sad to lose the things I listed, but I will not be destroyed. I was telling Jess that when I delete my Facebook, I will have a much more concrete existence. My life will cease to hinge on whether a person in every country can pull up my life summary. I do not exist any less because my friends from high school cannot fully follow my life. I do not exist any less because all of those pictures are lost. My other uses of the internet, this blog and twitter, don't depend so much on my past. They are completely wrapped up in my present.

Now when I walk down the street in Chicago, all of me is walking down the street. I can pull out my phone and tweet. I can stop off in Starbucks and post a quick blog. But when I walk by a person, they aren't my friend unless they come talk to me. There is no extension of me that a person thousands of miles away can look at.

One of the sadder points of losing Facebook is the sheer amount of time I have put into that site. It is odd to get sentimental about it, but I will be. I was telling my roommate Eli last night this realization: I have done very few things in my life as long as I have done Facebook. My tagged picture was posted on June 23 2006. That means that I have been on Facebook five years and four months. A ton of crap has happened in that time. Some of the first pictures I have on Facebook are from my first Homecoming. Facebook must have all of my past relationship statuses on record. There are hundreds of pictures of me playing bass in rowdy bands. There are a lot of good conversations and classic statuses I've made. Being sentimental about those things is entirely pathetic, but I loved all of it. I'm putting a chapter of my life to rest. There are very few things that I've done for longer than five years.

And tomorrow, I delete my Facebook.

-Sam