I can’t even imagine the mindset here. You’ve just quit Facebook because you’ve wasted away countless hours of your life on it. So what do you do now with your newfound freedom? Well, write a long article or blog about your quitting Facebook of course!
One of latest “cool” things to do online is to publicly quit the popular social networking site, and I’m sick of it! Instead of talking about their own faults, they vilify Facebook and its users. It’s not their fault that they got addicted to Facebook – it’s Facebook’s! (oh and society).
These articles and blogs often say that Facebook users have no dignity, and that they use Facebook to gloat and to play the voyeur. They say that Facebook is one of the major ills of modern society. These writers are hypocrites – they complain that Facebook users are nothing but attention seekers, and then they write provocative articles with the sole purpose to attract attention and gain as many hits and comments as possible. And it’s working. Articles on quitting Facebook often get a ton of replies and get forwarded around – even sent around on Facebook itself.
These articles are often characterized by an “I’m better than everyone using Facebook” attitude.
One such recent article really annoyed me entitled: You Can’t Friend Me, I Quit! by Steve Tuttle over at Newsweek.com. Tuttle is painfully trying to be as witty and pithy as possible and in doing so fails to write anything substantive. It reads as a “look how clever I am” article more than anything. He even throws in a line about how he wouldn’t have been able to the story about quitting Facebook if he hadn’t already quit because he wouldn’t have had the time.
He goes on to liken status updates to inane cell phone chatter and calls the site the “emptiest place on Earth.” With his newfound free time he plans to frequent a local bar more. That’s pretty productive.
In addition to be really irritated by Tuttle’s irritating writing, I’m really embarrassed for his teenaged daughter, who he claims literally cried when he first joined the site. Disclosing your daughter’s emotional instabilities to the whole world isn’t very cool.
Look you public quitters and haters – Facebook is what it is – a social networking site! It is as advertised! What did you expect?
And you do realize that YOU and YOU ALONE control how much time you spend on Facebook. It is not society’s fault – it is YOURS. You don’t have to constantly update your status, nor must you look at others’. You control whom you friend; it’s not important, be as selective as you choose.
Some have called status and other updates from Facebook friends spam, and that the more Facebook spams you get, the more inundated you will be with said spam.
First – The whole point of Facebook is to stay connected with a group of friends – if you don’t want information from certain people, then why did you friend them in the first place?
Second – Facebook is increasingly becoming more customizable. You can already largely control what information you see from which users, but it looks like an update around the corner to the Facebook homepage will make this fully customizable.
If Facebook is guilty of anything, it is of being designed too well. Let those who enjoy Facebook enjoy it in peace.
Just quit quietly please. No one will miss you. I certainly won’t.
Spitting on a Well-Scrubbed Floor 