The Occasional Solipsist

You know facebook. Everyone does. It is the most recent in a long line of novelty web acts that does little more than provide a false sense of connection to people you fell out of touch with, usually with good reason. You might know it better by its skanky cousin, MySpace.

Don't get me wrong. I had (note the past tense) plenty of 'real' friends on my facebook account. But I can still talk to them through means of communication that don't take up what little bit of free time I do have.

And now that my workplace has banned the use of facebook on office computers with a draconian security policy, I would have to spend even more time at home on the thing than I was just to keep up.

So this morning I dumped my facebook account and freed up a lot of future time for myself. And dumping the account is no easy feat, as the developers want you to come back and re-activate your account. Deleting, btw is not an option. So if, like me, you feel the need to rid yourself of all the notes, wall posting, profile reading, and answering messages from people you don't remember, here's what you need to do to complete the job. Props to WikiHow for the tips:

1. If you've gotten into the habit of using Facebook messages instead of email, update your email address book so you can get in touch with your friends next week.
2. Remove every single friend from your friends list.
3. If you've started any groups, transfer admin rights to someone you trust.
4. Leave all your networks
5. Leave all your groups.
6. Delete all your photo albums.
7. Delete all messages on your wall.
8. Delete all Comments you've made
9. Delete all your messages, both sent and received.
10. Clear every last bit of information from your profile. Don't forget to remove your photo!
11. Deactivate your account.
12. You didn't forget to remove all your friends, did you? Next week you might find yourself tempted to reactivate your account, and where will that get you?

Labels: everything else