Before I go any further I should probably tell you why I am DELETING my Facebook account and not simply deactivating it.
If I were to deactivate my account, Facebook holds on to my friends, my likes, my posts, my photos, everything connected to my name, and keeps it for me safe and sound just in case I decide to reactivate my account at any time. I could be off for YEARS and they will still have everything in its place waiting for my eventual return. And that is lovely if I was wanting to take a break or sabbatical, I know many people who have done that for lent or to self regulate their Facebook involvements.
But I did not want a mere break. I am an ALL or Nothing kind of gal and I wanted to be free from the clutches of Facebook. But there was always something holding me back......pages. I happen to manage a couple pages and I still needed to have access to them. (I don't know how, but one of the pages actually has its own login info so it really isn't an excuse for me, but the other two pages were created through someone's personal account and when I tried to recreate them as a separate entity, Facebook sends me a little message telling me that they only want "people" making accounts and that it looks like I am making a business page.....tell me, how does Nutella or Big Bang Theory have accounts? Do they have some corporate person that has made their page under their personal accounts or did they make them before this new personhood limitation was put on accounts......either way, I have yet to figure out how to make a page without having my own account linked to it).
So, I don't want to have a personal Facebook page waiting for me somewhere luring me back and I need to have access to business pages still on a regular basis.....conclusion: DELETE everything that is mine, that way I have no one to connect to, no photos bouncing around out there, but I can still log in occasionally to do the business sides of things...until someone else takes those over, and then I'm gone for good.
So let the deleting begin!
Wait, I can't just delete all my photos, some of them I took on my phone and then uploaded them straight to Facebook. And I have such cute kids, I can't lose these photos. I started looking back at the beginning of my posts and my youngest was three when I first started Facebook, I don't even know if I have any of those photos somewhere in my house or on my computer......so I started downloading photos and that takes time! Oh my goodness, there are nights where we put on a movie, and I sit here slowly downloading my own photos one at a time. I don't know what I am going to do with them, but at least I know I have them somewhere, and then I go back to Facebook and delete the photo, or album.
And then some of my photos were ones that other people took and then tagged me in....so I can't delete them. And I may want to still have access to them especially if they are of my super cute kids (which they always are, who wants to take a photo of my husband and me?) So, that means I have to download it and then remove the tag that they put on the photo attaching it to my account. (Uh oh, is that bad I am downloading my friends' pictures of my family--I mean, it's their photo, but the photo is of US....how many times has anyone stolen my photos that I have tagged them in? Probably no one, because they are staying on Facebook and will always have access to the things we took photos of ten years ago...)
So here I am slowly deleting my photos, and my "likes", oh yes, Facebook keeps track of everything I have ever liked and I still have 32 hidden likes that no longer fit into the prescribed categories of "restaurants, movies, music, books, and normal stuff like that. At one point I had liked the page "hugging", because who doesn't like to hug......and I eventually found the like (under "other likes" go figure) and had to unlike the page. I had also liked "colors" and "Nutella" and what I realized as I went through unliking everything, is how pointless it is to "like" at all. Why do I need to tell you what I like? And more importantly do you even care?
Of course you don't. I mean someone might care for a brief moment like "Oh that's fun, I like that too...." but we all forget about it the next minute and move on with our lives. But Facebook doesn't. No, they track that information and keep it as a filter to know what kind of advertisements to give me. It's an instant graph maker to tell them how many women age 25-35 like Nutella, and Old Navy, and Princess Bride. Facebook is literally heading up the marketing research departments for Corporate America. They don't even have to do any work to get the information, we willingly click on every little thing that catches our interest.
So, since I am no longer going to be using a Facebook account for my own personal use, I no longer want to offer my information for Facebook to use either, because I am sure the higher people in the offices were planning to shape the world off of the knowledge that I love Parks and Recreation. Which I still do... whether I am telling anyone about it or not.
See, I don't need to show people all the little things about myself to validate who I am and what my interests are. I don't need to know how many other thousands of people like the same things I do. And I definitely don't need to be wasting my time scrolling through the ads from those companies/shows on my newsfeed, thus solidifying my consumerism loyalty. So yes, I am deleting everything on Facebook, but I am not deleting my personality, or history, that still stays the same, even if it hasn't been declared to other people online.
There are times when I wonder if other people out there feel the same way I do? Do students in high school know that they really do have a personality even if they haven't declared an interest online? Is the photo still a good photo even if 100 people haven't liked it on Instagram? Does the generation coming up know how to just enjoy a moment without sharing about it by uploading the picture or telling people where they are and who they are with? Can they just BE and know it is enough to be there.
Tonight's Coffee: Oh back to the Kona Coffee again, in a travel mug, with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of half and half :)
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