Been gone for a while. Where have my Internet footsteps led? Facebook. Yes, that is right. I became enamored by the lure of tracking down old friends (read: girlfriends), to read interesting and fascinating updates about people tending their gardens, or installing toilets, or ranting on about — well lets not kid ourselves, the same stuff I rant on about here. I came, I saw, I ventured. Heck, I even fully immersed myself in the Facebook universe but what did I get for my time, effort and energy? Little to nothing, really.
Truth be told, one thing turned me off. People telling me all the fabulous things they are doing but honestly, going for a hike isn’t that fabulous. At all. Visiting Facebook feels like a middle school popularity contest or beauty school pageant. “Look at me doing this,” or “Look at me doing that.” Topics like: I have new shoes, my toilet is broken, my boss sucks, and I’m single right now are just, um, uninteresting.
I recently read a couple of studies. The first said the more Facebook friends one has, the more shallow one’s actual life. Hrmmmmm. I know some pretty deep people with a friends in the 700 count so I’m unmoved by that study. The second claims the more friends one has, the more solitary their life. Again, find little corollary between those two point of view so I’ve concluded those studies must be sponsored by haters, pure and simple. My reasons for moving on and simple — I’m just not interested.
Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing about an art exhibit or a movie review, perhaps an interesting show coming to town but those nuggets are so rare, it is hard to find them while parsing the crap. So, I’m done. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll keep the account, keep my Real ID version and my gaming version just for grins but as for logging in on a daily basis and seeing what is up? Um, I have better things to do like checking my couch for spare change…