Like most brilliant ideas, this one hit me as I was lying in bed, restlessly willing myself to fall asleep, in order to be sprightly for my first day of teaching.
I suffer a disease which affects one in every one American: I am a Facebook. Gripping my fingers, it wills me to probe the Javanese depths of people's lives. Not even people that I know, or care about (or have even spoken to in person, in some cases)- the Brit who I shared one bottle of cheap French supermarket wine over a rickety old table in a Ly0nnais hostel one night. Or the friend of a friend who engaged in drunken chit chat one night with me at the Elbo Room (I swear I didn't meet all my Facebook friends while inebriated.)
This little affliction of mine may seem harmless when you're whiling away the hours looking at the distant yet up-close-and-personal lives of mere acquaintances. But how does one fare when Facebook is used as a forum for post-break up updates? Some people obsess. They get entangled in the web of friend acceptance, wall postings, status updates and photo tagging of their ex, all the while trying to work their way out of it. The web, however, has its slithery strands firmly wrapped around the stalker, never letting them forget their ex's name and what they are doing. One past break up, it seemed the website was working against me and would keep featuring photos in which my lost love had been tagged, even once we were no longer Facebook friends. They appeared under the link "Good Memories" and stated the date the photo was uploaded. I concluded at this moment that Facebook is the Paparazzi for the Z-list, our very own terrible tabloid, splashing headlines such as "... is off to the Bahamas!!!!!!", when covering our romantic getaways; or to famous births "... 9 inches dilated... I'm gonna be a moooom"; to really trying to fill space, "... is wondering how she should use half a cup of leftover milk" (actual status). Then, like any gossip magazine worth its weight in acrylic nails, there are the "spotted" photos that inevitably go with every event. The bachelorette parties, all straightened blond hair and orange skin, posing with a drink in hand at the straightest disco in town. The lovers' holiday snaps, close-up photo after self-taken, close-up photo of the lovers, because they couldn't bear to separate, not even to take a photo. I'd rather see another photo of Mariah Carey walking down Fifth Ave in stilettos and wearing a snowsuit and and fur coat (yet miraculously manages to show off 95% of her breasts in.)
When Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston split, Jennifer was heartbroken, Brad was off choosing African children from a line-up with Ange, and People, Star and other fine publications were smearing it like shit off a shoe- in our faces and in the estranged parties'. I can only assume that for the two who were recently separated, their pain (although Brad clearly 'won' that one) only made worse by the media circus surrounding it.
So, tell me- why would I want to have anything resembling what Brad and Jen went through, happen to me? Well I don't. And that's what led me to make my decision to quit Facebook for the month of March. After a break up, which has only served to cause pain and hurt to both parties in different ways, I've decided that I no longer need to know that Susan is baking brownies and that they are YUM! Or that someone I last spoke to ten years ago is an aunt. Not least of all (and this was in face my driving motivation) do I need to know what the view from the window of my lover who I recently broke up with looked like (a snow-filled, winter wonderland) on the getaway weekend we were supposed to go on but broke up in the preceding week. "Block him," you all sneer. "Hide his publications," you offer as an alternative. What most people won't admit, but I freely will, is that I can't help myself! I am a sadist. I need to know. I know I will regret and wish away all knowledge of what I have learnt the minute I learn it but I still do it. I drink, and I know I will be hungover. I still do it. I go home with someone who I have a sneaking suspicion will not look any better in the harsh light of day. Yes, I know the consequences of my own actions but I can't STOP MYSELF.
What's to stop me from logging back in to Facebook? So, they make it hard to completely rid yourself of it. An attempt to close your FB account is like that episode of "Friends" where Ross tries (unsuccessfully) to cancel his gym membership, and at each attempt they bring out an extremely attractive woman who works in the "Closures" department. Or my credit card company, offering me a $2,500 increase on my limit (up to $8, 500) by clicking "yes", but to decrease my limit I had to call and speak to someone.
When you go to deactivate your FB account, you are faced with the earth-shattering news: if you cancel your account, you will lose everything you have put on Facebook. Then you are presented with photos of your friends, presumably to invoke feelings of guilt and remorse at turning your back on hearing about every detail and seeing every photo. After you have got over the racking feelings of abandonment, you must provide a reason. Of the nine offered, I chose "It's temporary. I'll be back". And then in the field marked "please explain precisely why you are leaving Facebook", I entered: I'm tired of hearing about other people's lives. I want to live my own for a few weeks."
The ironic thing is that you can never REALLY quit Facebook. I mean, you can. But to do that you'd have to delete ALL your friends, every single freakin picture, and all your information. That's a lot for someone like me, who's embraced FB since being introduced in December 2005 (oh yes, I remember the day we met). Even once I deactivated my account, I found out all you needed to do was to sign back in and it was all the same- this vast world, had been continuing unabated without me.
So, as the clock nearly hits 12.00am on March 1st, 2011, I (somewhat weakly) vow to abstain, for the month of March, from the one of the most significant phenomena of my generation and possibly the most invasive thing to enter my life since my visit to the proctologist... FACEBOOK!
Here you will read about my walks along the beach thinking about when we were together, my moments of weakness when I wonder if I've done the right thing, then the hump I overcome, realizing that because I haven't been able to live life through Facebook, I've actually been living life!
