Over the past few months, I've started the process of
getting off of Facebook entirely. My wife is the only
reason I didn't do things in a more precipitous way,
which is my natural inclination.
So, first I made a backup- to placate my wife, who was
quite convinced that FB is a sort of a journal for life
that would be absurd to delete wholesale. With that out
of the way, I began removing posts manually. I didn't
have many to begin with, so this wasn't a big deal. I
deleted the public ones first. Then I had to go back a
few days later and delete many things again, since FB
must have determined that I didn't *really* want to
delete that old stuff.
After a bit, I started to go back and delete private
posts as well, that didn't really have any meaning to me
currently. I left a few that were fun or informational.
In the next phase, I got grumpy and started nuking things
unceremoniously. Pretty much everything went out the
window. I left some family photos, since they are the most
common claim I hear as to why people can never leave FB.
Next, I added FB to my /etc/hosts file, pointing to its
appropriate destination of 0.0.0.0. This was simply to help
me just in case I accidentally typed in the URL out of
sheer boredom or habit.
Now, it's been about half a month since I've used the dumb
thing at all. I feel stupid for even talking about it, but
the reality is, I was sucked in for a long time. The stupid
had hold in my brain somehow, and now that it has been out,
I feel a silly sense of freedom.
It's odd, the things that hold us captive.
Unfortunately, with my newfound freedom, I haven't done
anything particularly worthwhile. But who knows, maybe as
the habit is further in the rearview mirror, I'll do
something amazing with my life. Or, perhaps I'll just
preserve some brain cells/functions that otherwise would
have fallen by the wayside.
