Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Getting Off Facebook

+ a handy template

Anyone else’s facebook profile just have really random stuff? Like this post:

“OMG Adam is Australia’s next masterchef!!!!!!!

My friends didn’t fail to point out that Masterchef Australia was just airing late it India, the show had already concluded 6 months ago…

Surviving college without Facebook would have been hard — most college-organized events, pick up soccer games, house parties, study sessions, game nights, hangouts were shared as FB ‘events’. FB was actually a really convenient way of connecting with new people. LinkedIn was too professional-ly, Insta wasn’t as popular early on, and taking down everyone’s phone number was just painful and kinda weird.

So anyway, once college was over I didn’t have too many reasons to use FB. Most of my friends were more active on Instagram now anyway. On top of that, I had 10 years of random cringe posts like the one above. On top of that, there were random photos of me as a kid that no one including me cared about. On top of that, I had just seen a random documentary on the invasion of privacy in the digital age and now FB just had to go.

Quitting template:

1. (1 month buffer) If someone texts on Facebook messenger, reply on WhatsApp, Insta, or whatever app that’s going to be used to keep in touch with people
2. Export friend list, connect with them on some other platform (LinkedIn works great here cause like 95% of your friend list are probably just acquaintances)
3. Scrape birthdays from FB contacts, add to Google Calendar (tbh checking birthdays was one of the major reasons why I logged into Facebook)
4. Back up all photos on Google Photos (if you’re reading this after June 1 2021, its probs not unlimited and free anymore :( )
   (Optional: Keep back up of all messages, posts etc)
5. Look through old posts, relive them a bit, feel nostalgic
6. Poof, delete.

Major after effects:

• 2 extra hours in a day during quarantine (adding more time when you’re looking for ways to kill time is a very questionable move)
• Reduced access to quality memes

Hmm with that said, once covid is a thing of the past, I might need to join FB again for the same reasons I did in college — connecting with new people, birthdays, and events. For example, if I want to host a halloween party at home, I really don’t want to be sending out email invites…

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