Friday, November 25, 2016

I'm a quitter

I did it. I quit Facebook. I didn't do it the right way - I didn't announce it and wait for the ensuing pity party, "OMG, please don't go, We'll miss you, BLAH BLAH BLAH". You see those every once in awhile and you want to scream. Facebook is making us all dumber and more narcissistic. It's not Facebook's fault. They probably had no idea (back when they started it)  that the average human is so self obsessed. So I just stopped.

I had been thinking about it for awhile. I mean, I had hidden so many people that it was just becoming a news feed for me. And there's certainly better ways to get news than FB. I couldn't believe how many people - people I thought were intelligent and decent - were spreading stories that are absolutely full of crap. But I guess if it fits the narrative of what they believe, well then it must be true. I don't know who said it. but some brilliant mind captured it. "If it ain't true, it ought to be". Even before the stories started coming out about FB's role in the election and how they spread fake news stories, I knew something was amiss. Collectively, we used to look down on Wikipedia for being a shady source of information. Turns out, that community does a better job of fact checking than the average moron. God forbid we verify the source of information we consume. That takes time, and most people don't have time to verify the regurgitated BULLSHIT that they spread. 

I will miss seeing updates and pictures from people I really care about, but it's not like connecting to people is that hard any more. I really don't have much of a presence on social media anyway. It's been almost two weeks and no one has noticed that I'm not on FB. So I can do one of two things. I can sign on again and say "I'm back, bitchez!" Apparently that's good for some egos. Or I can just stay off and consume information from better aggregates. Which is what I will do for now. In the meantime, you'll just have to let me know when Angelina Jolie gets caught in a three way with Drake and Paul Ryan. Egad.

No comments: