Why I Don't Like Facebook Anymore

The title of this entry alone sounds arrogant and self-serving. I am telling you right from that start that you might get exactly that kind of an entry. This being the case, I am including the following disclaimer:

The following entry does not reflect the views of The Badger Family as a whole or any member of The Badger Family other than James.

Over the past year I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the Facebook experience despite the fact that it is the only link I have to many of my friends and family members.

I joined Facebook back when I was single. In those days you could easily be left out of a party because you weren't on Facebook. I was very pleased to discover in my early days of facebooking that I could stay in contact with friends and family members who were far away without much effort on my part. It was a glorious thing and I loved it. It was clean and slick and wasn't covered in glitter and animated gifs like myspace was (I only joined myspace so my band could have another friend). I thought I had found a social networking utopia.

So why am I now bitter and curmudgeonly? Because my Facebook experience has turned into something I didn't want it to be. I used to look at my Facebook news feed and see things of interest and import, but now it's so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

Please understand that I am not attacking you, my friends and family who read this blog. I genuinely want to know what you are doing in your lives. That's why I got onto Facebook in the first place. What follows is a list of reasons why I don't go on Facebook much anymore.

1. The non-friend Without looking I would guess that I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 friends on Facebook. They can't possibly all be my friends. Studies have shown that human beings are really only capable of handling about 30 actual friends. There are really only about 10 friends of mine that have moved out of my life that I actually want to keep tabs on. Even taking family into account, there's no way I (or anyone else for that matter) should have even 100 friends on Facebook. In my group of Facebook friends I have people I don't even know, people I know but don't really like, people I know only vaguely, and people who would have naturally drifted out of my life were it not for social networking. My actual friends and family are probably the smallest piece of pie in the pie chart that represents my Facebook friends. It just isn't natural and it isn't the sort of thing a friend purge would fix because deep down I feel bad about it. So I have minutiae from people I don't really know or care about cluttering up my feed and keeping me from my intended purpose on Facebook.

2. The copy and paste I can't swing a nyan cat through my Facebook feed without hitting a dozen blowhard-ish statuses that feature the words "Copy and paste if you agree." These statuses are usually political or religious in nature. Here's the thing: I don't need a hallmark card to tell someone how I feel about my religion or my country. Should the need strike me, I can write my own feelings about such things with no help from anyone else. The statements that litter my feed are hackneyed, overwrought, and at times factually inaccurate. It boggles my mind that people won't use their own words to express how they feel. Copied and pasted statuses clog my news feed and actively deplete my faith in humanity.

3. The offensive political comment Facebook affords people the opportunity to say whatever is on their mind. Many people take advantage of the opportunity to throw their political views around a bit. I used to be a fan of talking politics until I realized a couple things: 1) Over the past decade, everyone has chosen one side or the other and nobody is really interested in what the other side has to say about anything. There is no true debate or discussion, only argument. We have effectively allowed punditry to destroy the ability to discuss politics calmly. Also, nobody seems to change their opinion one iota because of a political discussion. Everyone already has their minds made up, so you would literally be better off discussing politics with rocks. And yes, I am including myself in these sentiments. 2) The Internet is a horrible venue for the discussion of politics. It's so easy to misread someone's intent when you are looking at words on a screen and not their facial expressions. Not only that, it provides a screen of perceived anonymity and distance. People will readily say things online that they would never say to someone's face. On two separate occasions when discussing politics I have had friends say things to me that definitely crossed all lines of common decency. On both occasions they made it personal, and on both occasions I emailed the friends and asked them if they really meant what they said. When faced with the unnecessary sharpness of their own words, they both apologized and recanted. Like I said, the Internet is a horrible forum for political discussion. If I discussed politics face to face with either of the two aforementioned people, I don't think they would have attacked me personally. Anyway, with those two points made, I feel I need to say that I am looking forward to not logging into Facebook during an election year. I anticipate such a maelstrom of political offensiveness on both sides of the coin that I will be better served doing almost anything else.

4. The time-waster Facebook is set up in such a way that you can waste hours upon hours of time while accomplishing nothing. The sum total of useful things that I have learned or done on Facebook in the past year would account for less than an hour of my overall Facebook usage. I have wasted hours upon hours on Facebook doing practically nothing. And I don't even play farmville or any of the other horrible time-draining games people beg me to join. I have wasted hours that I could have spent reading books, watching sunsets, or playing with my adorable daughter. Forgive me for getting all high and mighty, but I have much better things to do.

5. The low-opinionator Facebook has rarely if ever improved my opinion of anyone. I feel like I get along a lot better with people if I don't know that they really like lady gaga. I have never looked up to someone because they had to guts to make insensitive political statements online. I have never seen pictures of someone's appendectomy and felt closer to them afterward. Facebook is a place without borders, and borders are what make us a society and not a random collection of primates throwing feces (an image apropos to political discussion on Facebook). Oftentimes Facebook simply provides too much information for me to respect people I would be otherwise inclined to respect.

I feel like I could go on and on, but it would just devolve into something more bitter than it already is. Once again, if you are a true friend or family, you are the reason I joined Facebook in the first place.

After all this, I will not be deleting my Facebook account. Why not? Because there are a few people that I will never hear from again if I delete my account. I still plan on logging in once every few months to see where life has taken them.

So where can you go if you want to know what I'm up to? You're looking at it. I'm not promising to suddenly become the world's most faithful blogger, but I do intend to write shorter blog entries that are a little more like status updates. I really do get winded when I undertake long, drawn-out and preachy entries such as this one. So there you have it: a system that might work better for everyone...or at least just me.