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6 Reasons I’ve never had a Facebook (and never will)
6) Friends
Quick! Log into your Facebook account. That was fast! You were already logged into it, weren’t you? It was already in a separate tab wasn’t it? Anyway, look at your friends list. How many people are there? 100? 200? 300? Well guess what? Nobody has that many friends. Not. One. Person. It’s impossible for someone to keep up with so many people. Here’s a helpful graphic about the hierarchy of friendship.
Most people only have one best friend (if any) and very few people have two. Nobody has more than that. There’s probably an average of 10 people that you might hang out with on a regular basis, this usually includes your best friend. Now your actual “regular” friends. Your “casual” friends. You hang out with these people maybe once every couple of weeks. You might see them around school or something and you’ll wave to them, maybe even chat for a bit, because you want to, not because there’s no one else around or you’re bored. I’m gonna stretch and say that maybe 30 people fit this criteria, including your 10 close friends and one best friend.
That’s it. 30 people, (give or take 5 or so.) If you want to include family: mom, dad, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, (depending on the size of your family) you’re probably looking somewhere between 50-75 people. ANYONE OTHER THAN THESE PEOPLE DESCRIBED ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS. They are lower on the friendship hierarchy, which is fine, but what’s the purpose of having 200 people that you rarely see or spend your time with on your friends list? Which brings me to my second point…
5) Communication
So say you took my advice and removed everyone except your closest friends and family. Now what? What’s the point of communicating with these people over the internet? You see them enough as it is. You don’t need to see their status, you already know what they’re up to. You don’t need to browse through their vacation pictures. They showed them to you in their scrapbook. Their physical scrapbook. You flipped through the pictures together.
Now isn’t that so much better than clicking a mouse, going over each picture, (maybe laughing, to yourself obviously) and commenting on a few? Isn’t it a much more engaging experience looking through the album together and feeding off each other’s positive energy? Isn’t face-to-face communication ALWAYS better? Then why do people choose to e-mail or text or message each other instead of just, you know, going over there and talking to them in person? Call me old fashioned, but the only time I text people is to make plans to actually see them, or because they’re too busy to actually see me, and I need to keep up with their lives (but that’s because my friends are assholes.) Either way, it’s always short, and I never leave plans unmade. I don’t want to just text you/message you all day every day, I just need to get ahold of you somehow to make plans to spend time together, like friends do.
You see that? Enhanced communication. If I want to know what a friend is up to, I’ll ask them in person. If I want to see my friend’s new baby, I’ll go see them in person. If I want to see my cousin’s wedding pictures, I’ll go see them in person. Humans are social creatures, I get it, but evolution didn’t make us this way just so we can hide behind a computer screen all day instead of getting out there and making real connections with people. That’s why long-distance relationships never work. Eventually, you’re going to have to actually spend time together.
4) Time
Speaking of time, how much do people really have of it? Of the precious little time we have in a single day, for many people, jobs take up a large chunk of it, so can school, and being with your family, and watching movies, and reading books, and listening to music, and eating food, and sleeping, and playing sports, and writing poetry, and learning to play an instrument….
These are just….astonishing. That middle one… almost 55 billion minutes. For reference, 1 billion minutes = 1,901 years. Granted this is by every Facebook user in the course of a whole year, but just look at how much time we spend on Facebook. It’s destroying every other form of the internet in time spent, and in one year it increased over six times. But that’s not the whole story.
The crazy thing is that if (and when) you get busy with other things, (like, you know, living), people will be sending you messages, and when you finally get to them like a month later, they get pissed off that you don’t check Facebook more often. Sometimes you might even get a text from this person saying they left you a message and to check your Facebook. Or worse, they see you in person and tell you to check your Facebook. How about… I do whatever the hell I want to do? When I feel obligated to check something, and if you’re anything like me, the real problem is that Facebook becomes less and less like fun and more like a fucking chore. A chore that you don’t even have to do. Or maybe you just feel like you have to anyway, because of…
3) Entrapment
Research the web and you’ll find out that over 53% of Facebook users play social games (like fucking Farmville) and that 19% of those users are addicted to the games. Cracked.com did an interesting article about how Farmville can get its users hooked on the game, and some of those techniques could get you hooked on Facebook itself. These are real strategies, thought of by paid marketing executives whose job it is to get you to keep coming back, whether you realize it or not. Not to mention this:
Though, admittedly, Facebook is far from the first (and the last) to make it incredibly difficult to delete your account in order to deter you from actually deleting it. But nevertheless, the 5th entry? Now that’s getting out of hand.
But what’s even worse is that a survey of over 2,000 women done by Cosmopolitan magazine, 20% of women said they’d rather give up sex for a week than not be able to check Facebook, (although to be fair, Cosmopolitan isn’t exactly the most trustworthy source of information in the world.) However, a more reliable study concluded that 39% of women consider themselves “Facebook addicts.”
To quote the study further, which was printed by Brafton news, (emphasis made by me), ”The study found that 34 percent of young women check Facebook first thing in the morning. For these young female users, checking Facebook took precedence over general parts of the morning routine, including going to the bathroom or brushing their teeth. Not only do these women begin their days with Facebook, but they also end them with the social site. Twenty-one percent of women check Facebook during the night, and 37 percent have even admitted to sometimes falling asleep with their palm digital assistants in their hands.”
This is pathetic. And that’s just women ages 18-34.
2) Monopoly
If you’re not a Facebook user, here’s something you’d better get used to seeing:
More and more websites, internet services, (even goddamn apps on your smartphone) simply will not allow you to access their goods without linking to a Facebook account. Practically every website you ever go to at least asks if you want to link to it. How often do you encounter this every day?
The answer: Too many fucking times
Moving on, remember when they started selling Farmville slurpee cups at 7-11? That’s just the beginning. Anyone recognize this?
The goddamn president of the United States has a Facebook account. It really is the best way for a company (or candidate) to reach the maximum amount of people with relatively little effort. By not having one, your business is missing out on 300 million people.
But I think businesses should do what they can to get the word out. That’s something we expect from them. It’s going back to the beginning of this entry, where you’re restricted from using a certain service if you can’t connect your Facebook account to them. So many people are on it, it’s like you’re the freak if you don’t conform. Hell, one phone (the HTC Status) even has a Facebook button on the phone. A BUTTON ON THE PHONE!
By being forced to create a Facebook account to use a completely unrelated service, you’re losing at least one customer, and as unbelievable as it sounds, I’m not alone.
1) Apathy
Ask yourself this question:
That has to be the number one reason why I just don’t care for Facebook. After all is said and done, I really just… don’t care. I’m perfectly content with who I am, how I spend my time, and I’m confident in my relationships with people. I seek solace in their company, not their cheeky status updates that they act like they made up (when clearly they did not.)
HA HA HA HA HA MASTURBATION IS SO FUNNY!! LOOK AT HOW FUNNY I AM!!
At a certain point I’ve stopped caring about where you are all the time, or that you’re stoked for the Justin Beiber concert coming up, or what the fuck kind of food you ate that day.
These actually exist.
In summary, if you’ve managed to read thus far, let me inform you of one thing:
And neither should you.
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