Enough is enough.
For too long, Facebook has profited from selling our data to unscrupulous entities. They were complicit in a foreign attack on American democracy. And on a personal level, this website has become a toxic environment — a depressing timesuck where productivity goes to die.
That’s why after I post this status, I will be quitting Facebook, except for groups, events, messaging, sharing my take on controversial op-eds, promoting my podcast(s), and seething with jealousy about my friends’ positive life updates.
Beyond that, consider me off the grid.
If you also want to stop supporting this platform based on security concerns, please go ahead and send me your phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Just leave them in the comments or PM me or whatever.
But be warned: as soon as this status stops getting reacts and comments, I will stop actively checking it as often. And you can take that to the bank.
I used to open Facebook and scroll through my news feed to start the day. Not anymore. From this point forward, once I’ve sent out the day’s birthday wishes, I’m out. I’ll come back 30 minutes later to give a courtesy like to the “thank you!” responses, and then I’m done. Once I’ve scrolled through each person’s timeline to get up to speed on their job, family, friendships, and pet photos, I’m as good as gone.
Of course, “gone” and “done” and “out” are such relative terms. For strictly professional and personal reasons, I’ll still need to utilize certain features from time (7 a.m. or earlier) to time (10 p.m. or later).
But make no mistake: I am definitely boycotting the Poke button. I haven’t used it in years, and I don’t know how to access it. But now, consider my inaction a form of resistance.
For that matter, I am also boycotting Farmville, except in the unlikely event that Grandma starts sending me seeds again. Because — while I definitely have principles — c’mon! It’s Grandma!
If you LMS, don’t expect a TBH. Unless I’m doing it ironically to harken back to the days before we knew about Facebook’s ethical lapses. My post might say “tbh I knew we would be bffs from the first day we sat together in home ec!!!,” but what that means is I’m doing guerilla activism. Never confuse my satire for complacency.
Memes, of course, will remain in circulation. If anything, this is the time to ramp them up. Those stills of Mark Zuckerberg looking slightly sweaty at that one congressional testimony aren’t gonna share themselves! What could be more embarrassing than having millions of people actively using your own social network to dunk on you?
In fact, I might just take my protest to the next level and pay to promote my next anti-Facebook rant so even more people can engage with it. Of course, Facebook’s executives are so myopic and self-aggrandizing that they probably won’t understand the irony.
The bottom line is, at a certain point you have to take a stand for what’s right. That’s why, no matter how much it may inconvenience me, I will never log on to Facebook for more than a few hours a day again.
And it’s really not a big deal, because Instagram is way better anyway.