If you want to feign the appearance of death, quit Facebook. I’m not sure how long it’s been since I quit… 6 months? 10 months? It doesn’t matter. But articles like this help reinforce my decision, when I find myself tempted to return.
Interestingly, that article ended:
But for all our complaints, both you and Facebook know by now, few people ever actually quit Facebook.
Really? I would have thought that far more than a few surly, antisocial snobs like myself would have deemed Facebook unworthy of their time. I wonder what the numbers really are.
I do know this. Every couple weeks, one of my friends contacts me via some other medium… so far I’ve gotten emails, postcards and a Tweet. Most are some version of:
Are you alive?
on June 14th, 2012 at 10:53 am
I think there may be an option on Facebook that possibly didn’t exist when you deleted your account. I went to my profile today and noticed that my friend count had inexplicably gone up by five people overnight. Five people, who I was friends with at some point showed up with no profile picture or options about how to designate them (friend, hide, etc.). I asked my sister about one of them who is a family member and she told me that this person is taking a break from Facebook but hid their profile rather than deleting it. This may be a way to give up Facebook while allowing everyone to know that you are, in fact, alive.
on June 15th, 2012 at 7:14 pm
And we’re glad to know that you’re alive.
on June 16th, 2012 at 10:06 am
Glad, or “Glad, Glad, Glad…” ? (Phish…)
Speaking of glad, I am glad to see you have a blog, I subscribed to it…
on December 1st, 2012 at 2:30 am
That was a very revealing article, hinting at to the direction in which Facebook points it sense of accountability. It is possibly the best-disguised commoditization of people in the service of marketing out there. I especially liked the phrase “low tide of humanity;” it was one of those things that echoes when your inner reading voice reads it.
Are any of us truly as alive as we would like?
on December 31st, 2012 at 10:19 pm
I was thinking about you today and the fact that you disappeared from FB. I took to Google and found your blog. Very glad to see you are alive and well and most importantly free from the chains of Satan himself, aka Mark Zuckerberg
Happy New Year! Drop me a line sometime, would love to catch up.
on February 26th, 2013 at 9:33 am
Hey Dave! Not only am I on and off of Facebook, apparently I don’t check my blog comments very often!
Good to hear from you…