A shambles. Generalized. The overdose. Before the summer holidays, at the height of the burnout, I decided to stop Facebook.
Even if I did not close my account completely, for professional reasons, I chose since June to no longer be present on this social network. In other words, I'm not ready to put my digital feet on Ello.
Paradoxically, for several years that I was there, I felt more and more the distance of my friends, but also of my family, of my relatives. Even though Facebook defines itself as a social network, it seemed to me that the links were unraveling rather than doing it, distending themselves.
Not that we did not exchange, but the very ease of the exchanges made that in the end these exchanges seemed to me more and more superficial, hollow, remaining in the scum of things.
Facebook had made me bulimic
What's easier than a simple "like"? What's easier than three words quickly typed on a keyboard? We "like" a status, we look at photos, we laugh at a joke, a cartoon. We share a video, then another, a status calls another, one image leads to another.
So many postcard visions parading. A life often "dreamed", of those we know well as those who are only vague knowledge and are almost all remained. Nobody is fooled and everyone plays the game. Between snapshots of ordinary life, auto promo, shots of rare gas or rants, in the end, no "true truth".
I had the feeling that things escaped me, that the real exchanges, the discussions of reality were becoming more and more rare: I was "in touch" but I did not know anything. My fault, perhaps, who were looking from the bottom where there is none.
Finally, more stupid than explode his package to see a stupid video, there is wasting time watching them when it becomes bulimic, and Facebook makes bulimic, drugged.
Because Facebook eats time: we take a look at it, we put an arm around it. The minute "just for laughter" becomes one hour, the hour becomes two. With the end the strange feeling of having seen nothing, read nothing, and not learned much. To have lost time. The era of zapping at the heart of human relations is also Facebook.
I was unable to measure my "consumption"
Possible that some find something else, or know how to measure their presence, dose it. Not me. The time-consuming and superficial side of Facebook has finally decided. Stop. End of this adventure there.
So I went back to writing. That of letters, letters, this news in more than 140 characters that we exchange when we really write. Even if I'm not "phone", I relearned long conversations, call to ask "how are you?"
To tell each other and to care about the other person, to share his life, his joys and his doubts, to inquire, to give and to ask advice, and not to be satisfied with an idyllic vision in Sierra filter. For that, there is Instagram.
If I'm still active on Twitter, this gold mine of information and instantaneity, here too I learned since June to close my tweetdeck at night, no longer read the competition of the valve most cynical, to just enjoy a show, or share with family or friends a good movie. And even love when everyone seems to hate.
And it is possible that one day, the desire also takes me to leave this social network too, but for the moment the assumed superficiality of Twitter amuses me still and the information that I find there is precious to me.
But the most precious thing to me, is my family.
I gained precious time
Three months that I left Facebook. I wondered if it would be a passing, just a passenger flush, if I would come back, if I would miss it, and in the end I realize no. As far as I'm concerned, I made the right choice.
I found the pleasure of having real exchanges with those who are far away, the pleasure of writing too, to see each other by camera, to talk to the image and to really listen, and I won as a bonus a precious time that I use, IRL this time, for myself, my friends or my family.