I’ve been on Facebook since 2007, and for most of that time I’ve been an avid user. I loved seeing and sharing pictures, getting a look into my friends’ lives, and I’ll be honest, creeping people.
Loved being the operative word.
Before I start, this is why I even still have a Facebook despite my complaining: invitations are issued through Facebook, I can see events I might want to go to, I use it to message friends, I use it to some extent for networking, to have birthday reminders, and I still share the occasional photo and link with people.
In the last few months I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with Facebook. The beginning of my Facebook overhaul was several friend purges – I ended up unfriending everyone I didn’t talk to much or, in a mercenary fashion, anyone I didn’t need for networking purposes. This was okay for awhile, but I kept scrolling through my newsfeed and being annoyed with various people for various reasons – overpromoting their own content, only talking about their boyfriend, posting mundane statuses, etc. I then made a brilliant plan: for people I didn’t want to unfriend entirely, I would just unfollow them and eventually I would end up with the perfect newsfeed.
This plan was flawed from the beginning, because almost everyone on Facebook annoys me now. I hate seeing pictures of food. I hate seeing three different updates about an article they wrote. I hate seeing them refer to anything and everything as a grand adventure – moving, getting married, going on a trip. I hate seeing them post about their baby’s poop. I hate them updating the world on their plans for the day to get groceries and watch TV. I hate seeing big long announcements about a new life event. I hate seeing them constantly gush about the person they love. And I hate seeing posts and pictures they like or comment on, which I somehow have to see despite not knowing who these people in my newsfeed are.
I realize this isn’t exactly a new thought, but I don’t know when Facebook turned into a forum solely for bragging and updating the world on your every move. Initially I used Facebook a lot to interact with my friends, but somehow in eight years it’s stopped being a two-way street. Now it’s about people broadcasting everything about themselves without a thought to whether people actually care.
Of course I’m guilty of some of these things too, but I’ve just been finding more and more that my first instinct is not to share things with my Facebook friends. Instead of wishing to go back to a time when I checked my Facebook multiple times a day, I’ve decided to just stop fighting it. My life has been a lot less irritating since I decided to only go on Facebook when I need to and I can’t see myself going back.
