{"id":3565,"date":"2014-08-20T10:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-08-20T14:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=3565"},"modified":"2014-12-28T23:01:20","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T04:01:20","slug":"farewell-facebook-app-sob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2014\/08\/farewell-facebook-app-sob.html","title":{"rendered":"Farewell, Facebook App *sob*<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yesterday the Ogre did the worst thing.<\/p>\n

Well first he did the best thing. He came home from work with an Amazon package and handed me this:<\/p>\n

\"bad<\/a><\/p>\n

Then after I had time to bask sufficiently in the glow of my husband\u2019s awesomeness, he said, \u201chey, did you ever delete that facebook thing from your phone, like you promised you would on the radio<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Damn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To my credit, I said, \u201cno I did not.\u201d Then I immediately picked up my phone and deleted both the messenger and the facebook app. My fingers neither trembled nor hesitated; they dragged those apps to the \u201cuninstall\u201d trash can of death both swiftly and surely. I didn\u2019t feel the loss right then, of course. I put down my phone and chirped \u201cdone!\u201d and instead felt this unfamiliar glow of choosing virtue and acting on it promptly, instead of pulling my usual St. Augustine.<\/p>\n

That glow faded rapidly, though, when I kept picking up my phone and being totally disoriented.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, I still have a facebook account that I can access via a computer. But that\u2019s like, so 2005.<\/p>\n

The weirdest weirdness about the whole thing is that I actually feel truly disoriented<\/em>. I did not realize how much I depended on facebook on my phone for literally everything<\/em>. Headlines, updates on friends, updates on colleagues, birthday reminders, anniversary reminders, reminders that I had planned to meet someone somewhere fifteen minutes ago\u2026it all happened through that magical bastion of social media. Like C.S. Lewis\u2019s wood between the worlds, I could loll around on facebook for Android endlessly, dreamily thumb-contemplating the lives of others and the interesting articles they linked to, with no idea that centuries had passed me by.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sounds all hyperbolic when I say it like that, but I bet if you asked my kids what I did all day, they\u2019d say, \u201cMommy stares at her phone like a zombie and ignores us while we paint the kitchen table with yogurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly unlike the wood between the worlds, I have not been jerked awake by virtue of merely taking the plunge. Instead, I\u2019ve read the first book and a half of Dean Koontz\u2019 Odd Thomas<\/em> series on my Kindle, thereby discovering once again that my addictive personality is still<\/em> not a transient feature of\u00a0 my character.<\/p>\n

In my defense, I did read some of the funny parts aloud to them.<\/p>\n

\"linc<\/a>
I do not think they fully appreciated it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s admittedly much harder to disconnect totally from reality while reading than it is while reading facebook. I was definitely more responsive to my kids yesterday than I usually am if my phone is in my hand. And at least I\u2019m filling my head with good fiction instead of finding meaning in my facebook timeline, right? Baby steps, yo.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, if you try to get ahold of me via facebook and I ignore you, now you know why. It\u2019s not you, it\u2019s me. I would say email me, but my inbox is a dark and frightening place. I try never to go there. I heard, though, that you can do this thing on your facebook box where you push a series of numbers and then talk with someone\u2019s actual voice instead of their profile picture. You could try that. Don\u2019t leave a message, though. Voicemail frightens me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related: Tom McDonald, \u201cAlienation: Technology & The Synod on the Family\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday the Ogre did the worst thing. Well first he did the best thing. He came home from work with an Amazon package and handed me this: Then after I had time to bask sufficiently in the glow of my husband\u2019s awesomeness, he said, \u201chey, did you ever delete that facebook thing from your phone, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103,119,120],"class_list":["post-3565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-domesticity","tag-facebook","tag-wifedom"],"yoast_head":"\nFarewell, Facebook App *sob*<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday the Ogre did the worst thing. Well first he did the best thing. 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