Farewell

DISCLAIMER: I do not hate EVERYTHING I see on facebook. In fact, I really love hearing about my friends and family, and seeing pictures of them. Love it! 

Once again, facebook is not ALL bad; just most of it annoys me (especially right now). So don't get all bent out of shape over this. ;-)

My kids talked me into getting onto facebook, and I stuck it out for several years. At first I found it completely uninteresting. One of the first posts I ever saw from a "friend" (really, just an acquaintance) was how sick she'd been—which I was sorry to hear about—and details of how dirty her bathroom got from her body's attempts to expel everything she'd eaten in the past two days—which I was also sorry to hear about. And I wondered if this forum was really something I wanted to stick with.

Then Michael started playing the "poke" game with me, which I thought was kind of funny. And then I saw some funny memes, and sometimes some fun articles were shared. And then my friend Kim got on facebook and this is really the only contact I have with her, so that was cool. And then we moved, so it was a way to keep in touch with the friends I'd been making over the last fifteen years. And then more of my kids got on, and I got to see what was interesting to them. And then my older kids moved to college, etc., and it was a good way to keep in touch with them...

But I hadn't been on facebook for long before I started seeing the same stories and pictures cycle around again and again and again. And every time a new friend got onto facebook the cycle would start over. It could be a real time-waster. So a year or two ago I almost quit this bad habit; I even announced my intention to quit by the end of a week. In the end, I stayed with it for the sake of keeping in touch with my absent kids and friends.

But this time it's for real: I am quitting. Partly because it is a huge time-waster—because most of what I see is this:

The bigger reason that I'm quitting is that this forum has A LOT of contentious content—because everyone has to express their opinion, and it has to be in a way that gets everyone's attention (so they use pictures).

So I see things like this, that I like and agree with:

And I see things like this (which usually crop up in abundance around conference time, or religious holidays):

But that's not enough to chase me away. It's the string of bickering comments that follow these memes that I hate.

I also detest the vulgarity I see on facebook. Not that any of my friends punctuate their words with cursing, but a lot of the comments from their friends do. And things that get re-posted and memes often include language I can do without. In fact, these posts often come from groups with those words in their names.

Yeah, I even had to bleep out
some of the picture above.

 So even though I've seen some really interesting stuff from a group called I ------- Love Science (for example), I banned them from my page because I just got so tired of reading their blankety-blanking name.



But what I really, really hate is the politics, and all the arguing that goes with it. (In fact, it was probably during the last election that I first decided to quit facebook.) There is so. much. contention around election-time that just looking at the stupid memes feels like someone is picking a fight.

Things about our current president:

I have to say that this sentiment is a little weird. I read "Mao's Last Dancer" a few years ago, and this sounds a lot like what the Chinese school-children were taught to say/believe about Chairman Mao.

Why? What, exactly, does that accomplish?

Things about presidential candidates right now (are the worst!):

I can say the same thing here: What does this accomplish?

No, I don't really like him.

I really don't like her.

Apparently the rest of the country sees things the same way I do (if we can believe facebook memes)

—but we still have to fight about it.

Then there's the new guy...

the man who would have you believe he is the 
ONLY conservative option for president (not true, 
by the way—but he's getting a lot of press)

...who, apparently isn't as wonderful as you might hope?

Just someone else to argue about.

Every meme comes with a set of conflicting, angry, finger-pointing headlines, and is followed by smug "this is so right because..." comments, or equally smug, "this is so stupid because..." comments.

Enough!

Between election periods I see very little of consequence, and the elections are enough to make me want to shoot myself every time I open facebook. So I quit.

I will link this blog post to my facebook account for the day, and then I'm shutting it down tonight before I go to bed. There is a chance that, in future, I will open a new account that will be exclusive to family and a few friends that I don't get to see often. (And who don't post politics every other minute.) So there's a possibility you could get a friend request from me some time later. Until them my kids can text me, email me, or even...call me.

In the meantime, if you want to follow my blog just type your email address in the little white box on the right and then click the "submit" button. You will get an email telling you whenever I have something fabulous to say. You can read it, and post comments if you want (just not political comments). I will never see your email address. If you don't want to follow my blog, that's OK too. I don't know that I am all that fascinating. ;-)

So I wish a fond goodbye to my facebook friends. And...

Farewell, cruel facebook. I kind of hate you.