I’ve been contemplating deactivating my Facebook account…at least until I feel Facebook gets their privacy controls under control. The only thing that is keeping me from doing it is that I actually find Facebook useful (or at least pleasantly distracting), and I don’t share too much of my life on it. If anything, it’s a public forum for me to be the dufus I am.
What I don’t like is one company having closed control of my activies, likes, etc…, and using them in a way that doesn’t benefit me and/or shares information that might make me less safe. It’s not like Facebook is the first company to threaten my privacy, but its reach and influence seems to be much more significant than others.
If I’m being totally honest, I also don’t like mass conformity. That’s not to say that I’m not a conformist. The fact that I drive a car and wear pants is proof enough that I’ve conformed to society just fine. But when it comes to matters of the mind, I know first hand – especially from my religious upbringing and education in psychology – that groupthink and conformity has hardly anything to do with rational, logical thought.
I’ve also always been slightly rebellious. Again, it’s been in a more subtle way. I don’t have blue hair and bone going through my nose, but more often than not, I’ve found my gut feelings and thoughts to be much more correct than general sentiment. Perhaps my aversion to Facebook (and yes, Twitter too) is that once everyone uses it, it loses it’s charm and uniqueness. I suppose I’m teenage-minded when it comes to matters of applying personal value. If everyone is using it, it must be uncool and not worthy of my time.
Finally, I’m not enthralled about being social. That is perhaps the biggest aversion I have of all social media. When I look at how I use social media, it’s usually attention seeking. More often than not, I’m trying to bring attention to myself, instead of really connecting with other people. At the end of the day, I guess I’m really just an introvert that prefers intimate communication (small groups, one-on-one conversations, physical versus virtual meetings), and the only thing I really get from social media is pathetic attempts at ego stroking.
So anyways, that’s why I’m contemplating clicking the button in the bottom right corner of this image:
