I Hate Facebook.

Changing my social media life. 

Click home. Scroll down. See a familiar post. Repeat.

Click notifications. See reactions. Respond. Repeat.

Read a political rant. Read a vent session. Read about the sunset. Feel enraged. Feel like you’ve been punished. Feel ostracized. Wonder why you are ‘friends’. Be jealous. Repeat.

Type something hilarious. Type something witty. Share something you wrote. Obsess over likes. Read through comments. Realize no one cares. Realize everyone agrees. Realize people hate your writing. Question everything you thought you felt, knew, or planned on being in life. Repeat.

Lately I’ve had this nagging feeling that I hate Facebook. I hate it for all the reasons I walked through above and more. In summary, I am a slave to its power. I hate it. I don’t want to keep scrolling through the same stuff that is meaningless, but I do, over and over again.

I sat there reading a former colleague’s post: “If you have a kid and post more than once a day I’m hiding you from my feed. (He used more foul language in reference to children which gave me the creeps.) If you post about religion, I get it you love Jesus, but I don’t need that more than one time a day, I’m hiding you.” — paraphrased

My mind was racing… well, I post pics of my kid, I talk about Jesus. Is this directed at me? If he doesn’t want to know about these things then why is he my friend, or more importantly, why am I his friend? I felt gross, I felt uncomfortable. De-Friending people is almost taboo. What if he sees that I defriended him? Then it’d be bad. Why does it matter? Why do I care? He obviously has no common interests except we worked together once and we both like football. Hiding someone’s posts means you don’t want to be friends with them anyway right?

So many blogs or articles are written about things we use Facebook for, if we are really using it for the right reasons (whatever those might be), questions to ask yourself before you post on Facebook, reasons for posting, and moments we are missing. There is this movement to put the smart devices down and start engaging in living beings again. I agree with all of it, yet they still don’t endorse quitting social media all together. I feel like it’s good to have connections with true friends you won’t get to see otherwise, but honestly when it becomes something different than that, it turns into a monster. A monster we let into our homes and minds, thinking, “ he’s docile, I can train him, I can make him a good monster.” Nope. He is still a monster.

This monster lurks in the corner and I feel him staring at me so I pull up the webpage and start to scroll, only to remind myself this is all meaningless. I feel gross, I want to quit Facebook. Here I am. I have a problem. I have a problem with how people perceive what I post, I have a problem with my emotional expectations with each ‘like’, comment, or shared story. I don’t want to feel miserable when I scroll through the fun things that friends share, but I do because the ugliness nests among the good.

I have a problem with people using the forum as a way to attack people and not receive consequences over their bad behavior. In person you can’t say whatever you think, you just can’t. In person, if you say what you think, controversy is normally substituted with civilzed dialouge between friends that are really engaging and communicating about an issue.

A lot of articles on this subject address how our activity on Facebook is our way of seeking approval by posting fabulousness about ourselves. They also discuss how we compare ourselves to others and feel worse once we are done. I have another theory: no one has 1000 real friends. If everyone we were Facebook friends with were really our friends we would have commonalities, we would be like minded to some extent, we would love pictures of each other’s babies, we would have genuine concern for tragedy and shared elation for triumphs. It wouldn’t be bragging if we were actually real friends. It wouldn’t be comparing, it would be sharing.

I had this heavy thing on my mind and finally I purged. I purged hard. I had almost 500 friends. When I started with Facebook, I was selective and didn’t friend everyone I met in the first place. I came from the generation that could only be a member if they had an email ending in .edu, but, over time, I added people because I knew them second hand or had a conversation with them and became less vigilant. I now look at my list and while there are still some stretches in my list, most of the people belong there. These are the people we send Christmas cards to and get my sense of humor. These are the people that encourage others with posts or comments. These are the people that take incredible photos or videos and amaze me with their talents.

Another group of people I removed were the people I was guilty of doing the same thing to. I was staying connected because I was spying, I was practically stalking them because I wanted a taste of their life and really didn’t want to be their ‘friend’ because I was their real friend, I wanted access to continue my jealousy, gain gossip, or just think of what life could have been if my path had gone a similar direction.

I want to have true friends. I know it’s still a little bit of a stretch to call just under 300 connections all true friends but it’s a start. I want to have new rules for why we are really ‘friends’ with each other. I want to be connected with people that appreciate my sarcasm, love pictures of my son and my life, and cry or rejoice with me in my life experiences.

I don’t want to shut down my Facebook profile I want it to function correctly and I want to limit its hold over me. I want to change the monster into a house plant that adds color to a room but doesn’t need to be fed constantly and brood in the corner when it doesn’t get attention. I will no longer be a slave to this technological master.