Learning to Leave Facebook.

I deactivated my facebook account a week or two ago because I have to finish this monstrous teaching portfolio and have a lot of grading to do.  Also I feel like I'm torn between two places--the U.S. and my current residence, and I have little to no interest in politics right now.  However, when I deactivate, it creates the same experience for Facebook friends as being blocked, and I start getting messages from people who wonder if I am undergoing some sort of new trauma or have blocked them.  In other words, Facebook doesn't make leaving easy.    I dislike Facebook for a number of reasons, but the primary one is that every little piece of content I put here is immediately gone and difficult to retrieve.  I'll want to follow up on something or someone will ask me about a link, and it's quite difficult to find again.  I am genetically predisposed towards hoarding, so this actually bothers me quite a bit.

The disadvantage of leaving, however, is that I lose the benefits of many weak network links--those friends who I don't converse with every day, even distant friends, who still surprise me with cool stuff or drop in to help with a question or problem.

Of course, I also lose out on all this content with alpha-friends--the people who are consistently hilarious or thoughtful, and provide that feeling of connection and whatever else that friends provide.  Because let's face it, as an almost-fifty-year-old-male, I am past the point where I make new meatspace friends.  It just doesn't happen, so virtual friends are the only game in town.

I feel like I've walked into a cleverly-designed trap, and escaping will require psychic pain analogous to quickly ripping off a band aid, followed by the unappealing idea of trying to build a community elsewhere.  And I don't have the charisma necessary to convince anyone to follow me into the desert, as it were.

So those seem to be the choices that Facebook offers, given my self-imposed discontent: A constraining friendship simulacrum or lonely freedom.  Of course, there's the third option of public hand wringing followed by inaction.  That has worked well for me in the past.

Can you tell I'm putting off marking the next batch of papers?

Anyway, if my account disappears it will be because I have decided, for the fifth or sixth time, to use twitter or blogger or nothing at all.  Perhaps I'm not complaining so much about Facebook as I am reflecting on the messiness and friction of human relationships.

No, I'm complaining about Facebook.