On Not Missing Facebook

When deleted my Facebook account, I felt some trepidation. I was excited to get rid of it, but that’s not the whole story: I also worried about my unplanned course of action, I was concerned that it was too reactionary. I worried about a lot of things, really. And I lost some people too. After filling my address book and Gmail contacts, I saw that there were some people who, for whatever reason, I now do not have the ability to easily contact. What is striking about my feelings about Facebook is this: they are purely interpersonal.

At the same time, Facebook was never that serious. It only affected me in serious ways after I deleted my account. It was as though I’d never realized that there were PEOPLE on Facebook. A dear friend (Brad Rowe) and I intentionally never became Facebook friends. We didn’t do this on purpose: we simply understood that Facebook was deeply inferior to our real, live friendship.

Make no mistake: the virtual world of the internet is not totally outside of reality any more than books or movies or other mediums. I’ve learned that I love the virtual world of the internet in the exact same way that I love to read a good book and watch beautiful films. This became clear to me after leaving Facebook; it gave me a sense of duty to not abandon the internet as a silly utopian escapist. 

Then I found Tumblr, transferred my url address, stumbled through designing this website, and the list goes on and on into the present. In the end, I have no sense of remorse or nostalgia for Facebook. To be perfectly honest: Facebook is outdated. I suggest that you delete your account and enter more deeply and rigorously into the real world — analog and digital.

This experience has also deeply impacted and changed my views on technology, communications, and the internet’s capacity for authentic creativity and community. More on that to come. For now, it suffices to say that I do not miss Facebook and have discovered it to be restricting, clumsy, and over-ripe.

It may in fact be rotten.