In case of emergencies, pull the plug

Facebook, the final frontier. These are voyages of people who have forgotten how to communicate outside of a set of pre-defined options.

Or, how I learned to stop worrying about Facebook and just get on with my life.

I do not need to know what you are thinking and when you thought it. If you need me to know, tell me. If you've read a good book, recommend it to me. If you want me to know which Simpsons/Rocky Horror Picture Show/historical age/American state best represents you, give me a call and let's discuss it.

In the meantime, I'm going to withdraw from Facebook and try to remember how to communicate with people by other means. But this is not a crusade or a campaign. It's just something I'm doing.

What interests me is that I am not the only one. I am not a pioneer, I am a follower. There are plenty of website dedicate to rolling back the advance of social networking.

Of course, the net is stupidly addictive and I'd be a fool to think that leaving Facebook would be the end of it. I haven't looked at www.cpfc.org for three years because I was wasting too much time reading the opinions of people I had not interest in meeting.

I don't write this because I think anyone will read it. Sometimes it pleases me to think that no one does because it means I can be less inhibited about what I write. All this is to me is a replacement for pen and paper, a means of self-expression.

And so, in just over a week, I'll leave Facebook. Why a week? Why not now? Well, because in a week I'll have a photograph to post on there, something I'm really proud of. And before I disappear from social networking, I want as many people to see it as possible. Whatever else I think about Facebook, it's an easy way to do it. Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes, of course. But I'll get over it. In about a week in fact.

Leaving Facebook:
Quitting Facebook
Permanently deleting a Facebook account
Why I'm deleting my Facebook account
Urban dictionary: Facebook withdrawl