Taking a Break From Facebook

So, I’m taking a long break from Facebook. Possibly forever.

I started on the platform in late 2006/2007, before the term “social media” entered into the common parlance and early on it was a way for me to keep up with some of the people I knew from my hometown as I started a new life in Edmonton. I started to use it for networking when I moonlighted as a scumbag pick-up artist, and when I was working at the comic shop it was a good way to keep in touch with customers and colleagues with a personal touch.

In the last bunch of years it’s been like my public-facing journal. I wrote a blog for a long time when I was running the games center that was about games and gaming and sometimes my travel adventures (usually with a bit of a D&D spin because I wanted to keep it on-brand). I caught some flack for that blog from a particularly awful human who (at the time) I respected quite a bit and I, uh… Retreated. I fell back to a platform where I knew everyone and used that to express myself instead and for a while that was fine.

It’s not fine anymore.

I’ve noticed that I’ve stopped reading. I think that might have been the first major sign that something was very wrong with my relationship to social media. I have always been a voracious reader. I’ve always needed books in my life. In the last year, the only books I’ve read have been children’s books for Thor. In my spare time, I browse. I scroll through reddit. I flip through posts by my family, friends, acquaintances, and even people I’ve never really interacted with. I run an ad-blocker, so I’m not susceptible to the endless march of advertisements that comprise the internet’s mercantile back-bone, but I can see how the algorithms have changed over time and I’m not keen on it.

Once upon a time, your Facebook feed was just the most recent posts made my people you knew, in the order in which they were posted. Now they’re curated, and that curation is the thing that’s bothering me. I’ve never liked that some of my friends disappear into the background, but I’ve never really known why it bothers me so much. I mean, I miss those connections, and I feel more like I’m shouting out into the void when I know that most of my friends won’t see my posts. But it’s mostly the manipulation of what I see that bothers me the most. It’s why I got rid of cable TV in my life almost twenty years ago, and it’s why I’m getting rid of Facebook now. And reddit. And twitter. I’m on the fence about Instagram and Youtube.

I have watched social media pull my friends further and further to political extremes in all directions. I’ve watched as algorithms tailored to making a corporation money have influenced people I care about. I’ve watched my own mental health spiral the drain on a few fronts because of the constant barrage of manipulative information. And frankly, I’m done with it. I might keep Instagram because I’m enjoying photography and I like sharing my pictures with people. I might keep YouTube because I’ve been enjoying creating videos. But I’m done mindlessly consuming whatever the algorithm tells me I should, because I know that the filters through which I view the world are fragile and prone to manipulation.

If you need to get a hold of me, I’ll still be on Messenger because this gods-awful corporation has made me reliant on it as a method for basic communication. But you won’t be getting any more likey-subscribeys from me for a bit.