Note: Apparently when one deactivates, their page still pops on and off of Facebook (at least currently). Around September 9, someone at work asked what was up with my FB page. I asked them what do they mean. And they told me that my page has been on and off about 8 times. I'd appear as a friend on their page and then I'd disappear. Well, 'twern't me doin' it. Not sure what's up with that. She said it was happening with some other FB friends as well; they had deactivated and were popping on and off.
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I realized this past week that I haven't blogged about deactivating my Facebook account.
I pulled the plug toward the middle of August. Some folks have asked me, "Why?"
The simple answer is, "To simplify."
Like other folks I'd thought from time to time about deactivating. But I would always opt to stay plugged in because of the great connections I had found, the cyber companionship FB offers via chat and reading what folks are up to and responding and updating my own status, the platform it provided me to express my voice and share about my blogs and about art, to support people's expression and art and writing, and probably some other reasons - if I were to ponder it more.
As I was backpacking in May on the Appalachian Trail for over a week, I seriously pondered about pulling the FB plug. At the time, I opted to stay for the reasons above and also for future promotion of a project I was working on at the time.
Yet I too often felt a tether to my FB page and a responsibility to respond and keep up with it, as well other pages and groups I had joined on FB. I like to support folks.
I know I could have simply ignored the tether feeling, or continued to put it in perspective. But it was still a tether.
Once the project I was working on was aborted..well..damage was wrought due to the way it was aborted...and I felt silenced..and wasn't sure about parts of my online presence. The day after that project ended cold turkey, I took to the Appalachian Trail for a LONG day hike some 15 miles across the Roan Highlands in Tennessee. I again contemplated pulling the FB plug, and maybe even Twitter and my blogs. Oh my.
Twitter and my blogs deleted? Hmm, that would be too much of a disappearance. Though, one's postings never really disappear (at this juncture of cyber history) once on the net.
Facebook? I felt the most *duty* to it, a duty I really no longer desired to feel. The tether feel.
In less than two weeks from that hike, I sent my FB page into the deactivation vault.
I admit that I felt a wee bit guilty for abandoning my FB page. It felt somewhat like I was committing a type of social-cyber suicide. And in one sense, I was. I also felt like I was destroying part of my identity. Huh?
Those feelings just further confirmed another reason for me to deactivate. Facebook is not my identity. Yikes!
I made awesome connections during my brief FB lifespan, which was around twoish years I think. Some of those connections will remain.
I'm glad, for now, that I deactivated. I have less emails and life is simpler.
Deactivate. The word reminds me of the Borg. Faceborg? Haha.
I still have my Twitter accounts though. I like Twitter. For me it's much simpler than FB.
But who knows, one day I may stop Tweeting. Perhaps I'll take up neighing at that point.
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