Facebook, I Don’t Need No Stinking Facebook!

Why I Deactivated My FaceBook Account:

Thumbs up for Facebook...not really.

Quite simply drama…too much drama. Initially it was cool to hook up with people I had known years ago or had gone to high school with or used to work with. However it just seemed to me that I had lots of people involved in my life that were Facebook friends but  in the real world I did not really like very much. I asked myself why on earth are these people involved with what I’m doing on a daily basis?

I used Facebook to promote my weight loss and exercise routine last year when I lost 50 pounds. I’d be at an MMA event and people would come up to me and tell me that they were following my progress on Facebook. That made me feel good. Making my fitness goals public on Facebook made me accountable and helped me reach them (my goals). Once I settled into my new fitness lifestyle it became less important to me to make my goals and progress public.

I’d go onto my FB page in the morning and some of the statuses people would put up were really interesting and I enjoyed reading them. Other people’s statuses were pedestrian, inane and rather pointless.

I felt that I was being deluged with unfiltered information by people I barely knew. It got to the point that I had to be very careful of what I posted because I did not want to “offend” anyone. Once I put up a status that was intended to be a joke. I had photo shopped a picture of a fat girl that I found on Google images. I put a status up saying that I found this girl on a fitness dating website. The joke of course was the irony of her being so heavy and being on a fitness dating site. Nearly everyone got the joke, but a few people did not and went ape shit. What right did I have to post this poor woman’s picture on my FaceBook page they raged? It was offensive to fat people they also railed. Of course none of this was said to my face, no drama on Facebook is ever said to your face. It’s really quite ironic that the people with the biggest “cyber balls” are in fact quite the opposite when you run into them face to face.

My thinking was that it was my page and I was within my rights to post anything that I wanted (within Facebooks terms of usage of course). If you found my humor offensive unfriend me and block me, what is so difficult about that? I had also witnessed other incidents where one person found something offensive another had posted and instead of blocking, restricting or unfriending the “offending” individual they responded by posting their own pedantic and acerbic retaliatory reply. It was all very childish and rather boring and in fact just became too tiresome to worry about or even think about.

I’ve been writing for this blog for a few months now and try in my own poorly thought out and crudely written fashion try to write content that is interesting at some level. There are days that I’ll have 12 views on the site. Other days I might get views into the hundreds. The point is that the world is not burning down the internet to get to Wingsdailynews.com. It is very difficult to create content that readers will find compelling and entertaining enough to want to return to the site on a continual basis. I feel that many people attempt to use FB as a platform to disseminate some kind of message but wont’ start a blog because they lack the vision, talent or ambition. Try it sometime; writing material on a daily basis that people want to read, it’s really not that easy. Failing that you always have FB where anyone can write anything regardless of creative ambition or ability.

I believe that Facebook has become less about social networking and more about cyber meddling and gossiping. You won’t find me on it, not for a while at least. If I need to do any social networking in the future I’ll be doing it the old fashioned and somewhat provincial way; face to face not via Facebook.

When I told my sweet old mom that I was deactivating my Facebook account she asked me “how will I get in touch with you?” The answer is actually quite simple, pick up the phone and call me.

Tags: Facebook