Talk to the hand, the facebook ain't listening

Off work with nothing to do today, I was browsing facebook. Nothing out of the ordinary, until at around half four (I think) I had something approaching an epiphany. I found myself thinking
"what really is the point of all this? Am I really going to waste my whole holiday stalking people?".

Those of you that know me will know that when it comes to facebook, the word "addict" somehow doesn't quite cut it. I've lost a lot of work hours this year because of it, and if I'm honest, if I don't get through my first year review, this will be one of my prime reasons. It made sense, then, to head straight for "my account" and "deactivate my account". Intriguingly, when you do this, you have to click on a reason why. I clicked on "it's only temporary" because I will probably go back on sometime soon to see what the gossip is (because sadly the only space where you can find this kind of stuff out these days is on facebook), but other options include "it takes up too much time" (to which you get a message saying how they can reduce the number of emails you get) "I get too many emails" (ditto) "I'm not comfortable with everyone being able to see my profile" (it tells you you can change your privacy) and so on and so forth, in an obvious attempt to make you change your mind. I was resolute, however, and proceeded with it.

I must confess, it felt good. I have had my criticisms of it for a long time. I've always thought it a bit contrived and insincere, and while the original idea of it was good, the concept has gone something out of control (not least the mistake that was the news feed).

Other issues come into play too, because you read stuff that's been written about you on other people's walls, and I must say, I've found some pretty demoralising stuff written about me on someone's wall that came up on my news feed (the person that wrote that should have sent a private message). It's also very easy to get paranoid about what people write or that a person hasn't replied to something or other that you were expecting a reply to. I've made a couple of bad bad mistakes because of this.

The last thing is that there is no doubt that facebook has had a massive impact on the edinburgh uni social scene. Events are advertised almost exclusively on facebook now and now also everyone seems to know everything about everyone before they even meet them, and even then, they just talk about facebook. At least, if the last couple of parties I've been to is anything to go by (not saying the company I had then was poor...).


Anyway, the fact that you're reading this at all means that I'm back on it. It wasn't entirely my decision but frankly I don't feel like deactivating my account again- a weekend without facebook was great but it's my only point of contact with some people these days. I like to talk to these folk so I'm sure you'll forgive me if I stay on for a bit. I will try to tone it down though...