YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST: I’m giving myself a 40th Birthday present. In mid-January, I will be signing off of Facebook, potentially permanently.
As I hit the big 4-0, I realize that there’s a lot in my life that is toxic, and dragging me down mentally and emotionally. Facebook is one of those things for any number of reasons. As such, it’s no longer functionally useful to me. I want association and participation with friends, not innundation of memage and to act as a revenue stream for someone else.
In a similar vein, and related to my statement yesterday, there’s going to be a cull in my friends list over Christmas. If we don’t interact much, it’s very possible I’m going to dropping you, especially if you are in… certain communities. I have a big trust issue in my hacker set of friends now, and I hate to pull the “if you’re not with me, you’re with the terrorists…” but there it is. If you think this affects you, you should reach out and talk.
Those of you who want contact information, I’ll probably leave it up in my profile for a bit. I can’t completely break loose, as I still have to support a couple projects that need Facebook for operational reasons. But I won’t be paying attention to profile tags, and I’ll be shutting off messenger and deleting both apps from my mobile devices.
Even though I don’t use it much anyway, I’m expecting to prune twitter back for the same reasons. It hasn’t gotten quite as toxic yet, at least in some areas… and I really only use it as write-only media anyway.
The plan for the 41st year of Matt?
* Meaningful interactions, not hello-soundbites
* Content creation, not content consumerism
* Keeping people that enrich my life, and dropping those who don’t.
There’s been a quote rattling around in the brain pan for a few days now. It’s appropriate here:
“Sometimes there comes a time when the odds are against you, and the only reasonable course of action is to QUIT!”
Elim Garak is a very smart man. Happy birthday.
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