Hello LilyOnTheLam.Com Readers -
Well it's been almost 2 months since I deactivated my Facebook account (read more about the origins of this here). At the time I deactivated it, I had serious concerns about whether I could break the Facebook "habit." I have friends and acquaintances all around the world and Facebook was my primary mode of keeping in touch. When I entertained, all invites were on Facebook. And like any good addict, I dutifully checked Facebook several times a day. It was a massive time suck and to be honest it seemed to invite a lot of negativity. Neither of which is a win-win in my book.
I felt that many times in innocently posting a Facebook status sharing what I was doing in my life, the status could be misconstrued as bragging or boasting. I travel a lot. I enjoy a great social life - and in sharing what is going on in my life, I felt like I was also opening the door to a lot of negativity in responses.
A Facebook friend of a friend of a friend (six degrees of LilyOnTheLam?) posted some racist comments and insults toward me and I thought "Really? I am choosing to spend my time on a social medium that allows such hate into my life? REALLY?"
People who wanted me to stay on Facebook told me I should just unfriend certain people and edit my news feed so I wouldn't see other people. But frankly that just seemed like a lot of work for what end? I guess in my old school mentality I didn't see why you would want to be Facebook friends with a bunch of people and then hide the news feeds on some of them. There were also other events that led to my decision to deactivate Facebook and I have to say once I did it, I felt like a burden had been lifted.
After the first couple days, the Facebook habit was successfully broken and I felt very good about my decision. Friends and acquaintances were not so happy with the outcome. I received a lot of flack about no longer being on Facebook and demands that I reactivate my account. Even though I have 3 email accounts (work, website and personal), a cell phone, a telephone landline (required by work - sigh- money out the window), a website (LilyOnTheLam.com of course), a business networking site account, a Twitter account (@SouthTampaLily) and of course a good old-fashioned snail mail address, evidently people required that I be on Facebook.
However at heart I have the mentality of a grumpy toddler or even a petulant teenager. If you tell me that you don't have time to read LilyOnTheLam.com or get a Twitter account and that I must rejoin Facebook so you know what I am doing 24-7, via reverse psychology I become more obstinate in not wanting to rejoin Facebook. Definitely that foot stomping "You're not the boss of me!" attitude that screams maturity - ha ha!
I had one person text me 4 times in the first 3 weeks I deactivated, pestering me about rejoining Facebook. I wanted to text back "You haven't texted me 4 times in the past 3 years and now 4 texts in 3 weeks? Why is this issue so important to you?" But I didn't - I explained why I wasn't rejoining the first 3 times I was texted. On the fourth, I stopped responding. Dead horse, beaten.
The difficult part in quitting Facebook for me turned out to be three things:
1) Many people thought I personally unfriended them on Facebook versus deactivating my entire account. I had at least 15 people contact me asking if I had unfriended them. Which I was glad that they asked so I could correct their incorrect assumption. I have to imagine that somewhere out there- there is a group of people who automatically assumed I unfriended them and instead of asking me about it are making voodoo dolls in my image. (Stop sticking me with pins!)
2) I stopped keeping track of when people's birthdays were because I would see it on Facebook. Since quitting Facebook, I have missed birthday notifications. So again I can imagine there is a group of people out there creating Lily voodoo dolls because I didn't remember their birthday. (Sorry! Stop stabbing the doll!)
3) And last and most importantly, I am missing out on a lot of news from friends and acquaintances. Since many of us used Facebook as our official "friends/family/acquaintance" news source, by not being on Facebook I am missing out on a lot of information.
However even with the 3 issues above, I still feel like on the scales of decision-making that there are more pros than cons for me not being on Facebook. I will say the drawback has been that I have been Tweeting more than ever on Twitter.com. It's like exchanging cigarette smoking for boozing. But I don't encounter anywhere close to the amount of negativity on Twitter that I did on Facebook, so maybe it's more exchanging cigarette smoking for occasional red meat eating on the addiction/bad habits scale.
Unfortunately, my Tweets are not pearls of wisdom handed down through the ages. They are either about LilyOnTheLam.com or bubble-headed reality shows on BRAVO TV. My Tweets have been on the social editions of Real Housewives of New Jersey and Real Housewives of Orange County. So I guess I should tell people who miss me on Facebook to just tune in to Bravo to see my "bon mots."
While nothing is ever perfect, I still feel like the positives outweigh the negatives on deactivating my Facebook profile. It's been almost 2 months and for the most part, I don't miss the multiple times daily check of news feeds and status updates. For people who really want to know what's going on in my life, they have multiple outlets to reach out to me and many have.
And for those who require that I post on Facebook and won't communicate with me in any other fashion, well I guess they can just spend their time making voodoo dolls and wishing on a star for my return. But really, life is too short. ;-)
So the moral of the story for me has been to stick to my guns - I made a decision to break what was a source of negativity and time wasting and I'm glad I did it.
What are your thoughts on social media detoxing? Leave me a comment in the comments section!
P.S. Since writing this post, my Tweets were featured in an article recapping The Real Housewives of Orange County reunion and also on an internet talk show at the 15:58 mark. So while I fully admit my Tweets are babble - not much more intriguing than Facebook statuses when I used to have Facebook - I'm getting a wider audience for my website through the silly Tweets - and to me, that's not a bad thing!
Well it's been almost 2 months since I deactivated my Facebook account (read more about the origins of this here). At the time I deactivated it, I had serious concerns about whether I could break the Facebook "habit." I have friends and acquaintances all around the world and Facebook was my primary mode of keeping in touch. When I entertained, all invites were on Facebook. And like any good addict, I dutifully checked Facebook several times a day. It was a massive time suck and to be honest it seemed to invite a lot of negativity. Neither of which is a win-win in my book.
I felt that many times in innocently posting a Facebook status sharing what I was doing in my life, the status could be misconstrued as bragging or boasting. I travel a lot. I enjoy a great social life - and in sharing what is going on in my life, I felt like I was also opening the door to a lot of negativity in responses.
A Facebook friend of a friend of a friend (six degrees of LilyOnTheLam?) posted some racist comments and insults toward me and I thought "Really? I am choosing to spend my time on a social medium that allows such hate into my life? REALLY?"
People who wanted me to stay on Facebook told me I should just unfriend certain people and edit my news feed so I wouldn't see other people. But frankly that just seemed like a lot of work for what end? I guess in my old school mentality I didn't see why you would want to be Facebook friends with a bunch of people and then hide the news feeds on some of them. There were also other events that led to my decision to deactivate Facebook and I have to say once I did it, I felt like a burden had been lifted.
After the first couple days, the Facebook habit was successfully broken and I felt very good about my decision. Friends and acquaintances were not so happy with the outcome. I received a lot of flack about no longer being on Facebook and demands that I reactivate my account. Even though I have 3 email accounts (work, website and personal), a cell phone, a telephone landline (required by work - sigh- money out the window), a website (LilyOnTheLam.com of course), a business networking site account, a Twitter account (@SouthTampaLily) and of course a good old-fashioned snail mail address, evidently people required that I be on Facebook.
However at heart I have the mentality of a grumpy toddler or even a petulant teenager. If you tell me that you don't have time to read LilyOnTheLam.com or get a Twitter account and that I must rejoin Facebook so you know what I am doing 24-7, via reverse psychology I become more obstinate in not wanting to rejoin Facebook. Definitely that foot stomping "You're not the boss of me!" attitude that screams maturity - ha ha!
I had one person text me 4 times in the first 3 weeks I deactivated, pestering me about rejoining Facebook. I wanted to text back "You haven't texted me 4 times in the past 3 years and now 4 texts in 3 weeks? Why is this issue so important to you?" But I didn't - I explained why I wasn't rejoining the first 3 times I was texted. On the fourth, I stopped responding. Dead horse, beaten.
The difficult part in quitting Facebook for me turned out to be three things:
1) Many people thought I personally unfriended them on Facebook versus deactivating my entire account. I had at least 15 people contact me asking if I had unfriended them. Which I was glad that they asked so I could correct their incorrect assumption. I have to imagine that somewhere out there- there is a group of people who automatically assumed I unfriended them and instead of asking me about it are making voodoo dolls in my image. (Stop sticking me with pins!)
2) I stopped keeping track of when people's birthdays were because I would see it on Facebook. Since quitting Facebook, I have missed birthday notifications. So again I can imagine there is a group of people out there creating Lily voodoo dolls because I didn't remember their birthday. (Sorry! Stop stabbing the doll!)
3) And last and most importantly, I am missing out on a lot of news from friends and acquaintances. Since many of us used Facebook as our official "friends/family/acquaintance" news source, by not being on Facebook I am missing out on a lot of information.
However even with the 3 issues above, I still feel like on the scales of decision-making that there are more pros than cons for me not being on Facebook. I will say the drawback has been that I have been Tweeting more than ever on Twitter.com. It's like exchanging cigarette smoking for boozing. But I don't encounter anywhere close to the amount of negativity on Twitter that I did on Facebook, so maybe it's more exchanging cigarette smoking for occasional red meat eating on the addiction/bad habits scale.
Unfortunately, my Tweets are not pearls of wisdom handed down through the ages. They are either about LilyOnTheLam.com or bubble-headed reality shows on BRAVO TV. My Tweets have been on the social editions of Real Housewives of New Jersey and Real Housewives of Orange County. So I guess I should tell people who miss me on Facebook to just tune in to Bravo to see my "bon mots."
While nothing is ever perfect, I still feel like the positives outweigh the negatives on deactivating my Facebook profile. It's been almost 2 months and for the most part, I don't miss the multiple times daily check of news feeds and status updates. For people who really want to know what's going on in my life, they have multiple outlets to reach out to me and many have.
And for those who require that I post on Facebook and won't communicate with me in any other fashion, well I guess they can just spend their time making voodoo dolls and wishing on a star for my return. But really, life is too short. ;-)
So the moral of the story for me has been to stick to my guns - I made a decision to break what was a source of negativity and time wasting and I'm glad I did it.
What are your thoughts on social media detoxing? Leave me a comment in the comments section!
P.S. Since writing this post, my Tweets were featured in an article recapping The Real Housewives of Orange County reunion and also on an internet talk show at the 15:58 mark. So while I fully admit my Tweets are babble - not much more intriguing than Facebook statuses when I used to have Facebook - I'm getting a wider audience for my website through the silly Tweets - and to me, that's not a bad thing!
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