I've been away from Facebook now a full forty hours. Yes, I can be that precise.
For time being I've just deactivated my account to see if I feel any better. And guess what...I do.
You see I'm not one of those people who only log in now and again. I am a full blown Facebook addict who can't resist compulsively checking her inbox, newsfeed and groups.
Some of the time I've spent there has been useful. I made some nice new friends who I've met in real life and kept in touch with. I set up a writing group that inspired and motivated me to write new novels and complete unfinished ones.
The trouble for me was, I was wasting far too much time there. I'd sometimes ask myself where the time had gone to. Another day without writing a chapter of my latest work in progress.
And OMG please don't talk to me about the drama on Facebook!! LOL
I was being a bit sarky there. So many people seem to look for arguments and quarrel over the pettiest of things. They also say things they wouldn't dream of saying to your face in real life. They hide behind their computers and class themselves as 'keyboard warriors'. Keyboard worriers more like as most of them couldn't punch their way out of a wet Echo and have so little going on in their lives that they want to cause mayhem and mischief on Facebook.
Let's be honest if they had more going on they'd pay scant attention to little things.
And of course, are these people real friends anyhow? Some of them will friend you on Facebook but walk past you in the street. Others will friend you in real life and ignore you on Facebook. What's that all about?
I have made some nice friends on Facebook, I've also lost real life friends over it too. Which is a shame but I think what happened was they showed their true colours online. Things I hadn't noticed about them before became magnified on the Book.
And the other thing of course, is Tagging. I don't appreciate being tagged in photographs showing up on my page before I've seen them, for the world and his wife to see. Of course there is an option to stop that now and I did that.
For me Facebook has so many privacy issues. Have you noticed if you inbox someone, key words are chosen from your messaging and appear as sponsored ads in your newsfeed? I remember one day a male Facebook friend messaging me, asking me a question about the book, 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. I thought, what's he asking me that for? Then he told me he'd seen one of my posts from that group appearing in his news feed even though he wasn't a member.
Facebook encourages stalking. I've had people follow me onto other people's pages and make comments, even though those people were not their friends.
And when you think of it, does anyone really care about the mundane things people post on their statuses? The things we don't need to know about, like how they got drunk last night and woke up with a hang over this morning. Or what a great time they had at a concert last night. No, not really. Quite frankly, I'd rather watch paint dry. Yet people seem to post these things as if to prove they had a great time. But can they really be having a wonderful time if they're not in the moment and constantly posting updates about the concert? Surely if they were enjoying it that much, Facebook would be the last thing on their minds?
So then, are people using social media to make it sound as if their lives are better than they really are? I think so in a lot of cases. I felt far more popular on Facebook than in real life sometimes.
This will be an interesting experiment to see how long I can resist. I might even be back there Monday posting, "I've just put out three lines of washing and baked a cake..." on the other hand I might just get on with my real life instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment