Quitting facebook

After excessively using the facebook for the last 4 years, I have deactivated my account today. For the past few weeks, I was observing that many people in my friend list were sharing nothing productive or interesting. They either shared nothing or made public their private lives, which I don’t like.

The friend-list is a list of anything but friends. I had more than 550 friends. With many I never met or met only once. Their brought up, thinking, ideals and morality was different than mine. Many of them would express their anger several times because I shared something, which according to them, was offensive.

People you meet for the first time in life, send you the friendship request before you reach home. If you don’t accept, they meet you for the second time to inform you about the pending request. The second meeting is the last meeting they would have with you. I had to hide some of my posts from some of the friends, because they considered them “immoral”. What was “immoral and unethical” to them was humour and sarcasm to others.

The 550-strong friend list was affecting my 10 or so real life friends. I am very choosy in picking friends. Sharing of hobby is my prime consideration while befriending others. A few on facebook shared hobbies with me. Rest were a crowd with whom I was forced to share my likes and dislikes. I realized that my privacy was at the stake.

Then there were friends who would tag me in their every post and picture. Half of my time would be wasted figuring out that who has tagged me and in what context.

There were benefits as well. I met my class fellows, with whom I lost contact decades ago. There were many pages where I would go and read the taboo stuff and appreciate the beauty of girls in the subcontinent. In the end, even the benefits failed to dissuade me from deactivating the account on facebook.

My son was the serious victim of my facebooking. My father has given me more time than what the fathers of that time used to give. I realised that my son wanted my attention and I was checking the facebook news feed instead. What my father gave me, should travel to my son.