My first week of leaving/weaning myself off of Facebook has gone extremely well. When I have logged in, I have gone through my content and deleted massive amounts of things going all the way back to 2008. I now only log in via an Incognito Chrome session on my laptop, which I rarely open anymore. (Most of my data consumption happens on my iPhone or iPad.) I am now texting actually interesting and meaningful things with people who I have wanted to cultivate a closer relationship with. I've let go of people I no longer need to have in my life, and the relief there is quite a revelation. I had many people muted or sorted into groups that I no longer check, so they were effectively out of my line of sight... but the act of going in and actually unfriending them was cathartic. And - surprisingly - not fraught with "meaning" or "import" like I thought it would be. I thought that being friends on Facebook held some sort of value or import. It doesn't. You click a button, they are gone. You click a button, they are back. But the difference INSIDE, in my head, was monumental. I realized I still mourned the loss of my old Burning Man crowd, circus family, and old coworkers I had lost touch with. They still held some space in my head, somehow. But, the act of unfriending them on Facebook was a ritual: I remembered the person I knew; I remembered our good times together; and I remembered that who I was then is not who I am now, and the same goes for them. Then I would click Unfriend and move on. The relief, the closure, the whatever-ya-wanna-call-it was wonderful. I was carrying baggage I didn't know I still had. Ironic Plot Twist About 18 months ago, here on Hubski, I predicted the death of Twitter due to Trump's use of the platform. Today, I am now a regular Twitter user. My feed is highly curated to rugby content, plus the local West Seattle news feeds, AOC, Mayor Jenny Durkan, and the cast of Letterkenny. That's it. Everything else stays out, and I find that cruising through the latest rugby scores, local news, and what AOC and my Mayor are doing, keeps me up to date as much as I need to be, on Twitter. And if I forget to check it for a week? Who cares? Nobody is listening on Twitter. Everyone is standing in the same room and shouting at the same time at the top of their voice. Twitter is ME ME ME all the time, so when I want to hear what people are saying about themselves, I tune in. When I don't; I load Fallout 76.
I need to do this on Facebook too - I barely use it now. When I open the App it's only because a "memory" has popped up and I am quick to laugh at my younger self and promptly delete the post. In lieu of 76, I've started playing Death Stranding - it's very.... different. Like, I knew it would be, but I'm surprised at how invested I am in the story that kinda doesn't make sense but I also kinda don't mind?