Social Craping

Today – October 6, 2010 - at 3:25 PM I deactivated my Facebook account. When I navigated to the deactivate account page I was asked my “reason why” I was choosing to deactivate my Facebook account. I scanned the check boxes of generic and completely irrelevant reasons Facebook provided and opted to go with “other” and briefly but specifically described my “why”:
“A very large portion of the people on Facebook are worthless jackasses! I suppose I would reconsider using Facebook if I could be assured that I would, under no circumstances, be subjected to the self-centered blathering and useless ramblings of people I would likely not speak to if they were sitting next to me on a crashing airplane.”

October 12, 2010 8:22 PM - It’s been nearly one week since I took a brave, but mildly impetuous step in deactivating my Facebook account. Two days after I relinquished all superficial communication with my “friends” the battery cord to my laptop sizzled out. One could interpret the abrupt interruption of electronic power supply to my internet operating machine as God intervening – should I have a sudden flood of regret in my disconnection choice. Perhaps God did opt to send me a confirmation of my choice or maybe I am a careless owner of laptop power cords (to date I’ve gone through 6.) Whatever the case, I have been “off the interwebs juice” for nearly seven days, save the few instances when I sparingly used work-related bookmarks to complete work-related tasks.

So then this evening as I swept the kitchen floor of its thin pug hair blanket, I began to mentally chew over my absence - and potential reintegration to digital communication. Strangely I felt an initial twinge of uncertainty and awkwardness as I imagined scrolling through the daily updates from others - colon, half parenthesis or semi-colon, backslash seems peculiarly trivial.

Most importantly and honestly I don’t care what others are eating for dinner or how much some hate their ex-spouse. I wouldn’t have discussed these topics with these people in person (if I even really spoke to half of these people in person within the last three years) and I don’t have any idea how these subjects of conversation would maneuver their way into a “real life” dialogue.

Only time will tell if I – once again – become desensitized to the “blathering” of the 111 people Facebook labels as my “friends.”