This post is dedicated on how/why I finally managed to deactivate my Facebook account for good.
I registered for Facebook after coming to US in 2008. I guess Orkut was the major social networking website used by my fellow Indians. Only a handful of them used Facebook. Slowly and steadily they are moving to Facebook. This is the time of 2008.
Now all of my friends are on Facebook and orkut is considered old school.
I remember I created my account on Facebook after noting that all my schools friends at JHU are using Facebook. It was so addictive. But, since most of my friends in India were on Orkut, I had to login to both account. I had to maintain a copy of same status messages and albums on both my Orkut and Facebook account. I was happy doing the sync. But, slowly it was becoming a pain and one fine day I thought I would delete my orkut account. SO, may be after 6-8 months after opening my Facebook account I deleted my orkut account. With that all my connections with my Indians friends on Orkut was lost. As if I cared.
Facebook was so much addictive and such a time killer. But, then slowly all of my orkut and school friends started joining Facebook. There was a sea wave of status updates and photo uploads. People were getting enagaged, some were getting married and what not. It was fun to know the updates from my friend's life. Friends if they were. I mean friends with whom I haven't talked to them since years. I was lightning fast in replying to their status updates or even photo uploads. I was literally breathing Facebook every second of my life. As they say, I was living in a virtual world. I had more Virtual friends than I had real friends.
Facebook at some point of time became a status symbol for me.
This clipping of an episode from South Park will help you relate what it meant to me. Here is the full episode in case you are a South Park fan.
I wasn't the same anymore, noone was the same anymore. At times, I was only in touch with people who were added in Gtlak list. If you are not in my gtalk list, we were not friends. That was my motto.
I started to hate Facebook not only because I was living in a virtual world but also of the fact hat I started to considered it as a time waster which initially started as a way to kill my time. Of my 24 hours of day, I was literally spending 10 hours on Facebook. Okie, I made up that last line but my point is that I was spending too much time on looking for Friends status updates etc. I was finding happiness in my friends social life. In between I forgot that I had a social life. Not that I had a girl friend who wanted my undivided attention, it was just that I had no social life of my own. I mean a healthy social life.
May be a year ago I decided to deactivate my account. I didn't wanted to delete my account as all my photos were uploaded to Facebook and I didn't wanted to loose out on the comments my friends had it for me. So, the only temporarily solution was to deactivate my Facebook account.
But, even after deactivating my account I was not able to resist myself to re-login and check the updates my friends made in last 5 minutes. I mean it, I didn't wanted to miss out on any updates that happened in last 5 minutes. Such a Loser!
So, things went the same way every week for couple of months. Whenever I had a feeling that I am losing my focus in life and decided to deactivate my Facebook account. But, I was back activate in an hour. I was even ready to pay $100 for every reactivation I did after a deactivation of my account. I wish I had this option.
Facebook was partially to be blamed to provide such a easy re-activation process.
I think it was more self control that was required on my part for not to spend so much time on Facebook. I couldn't manage to do it, UNTIL YESTERDAY!
YES YES! Its been more than 30 hours and I have not logged on to Facebook. Yay Yay!
So, how did I achieved this. Self control, self realization --------- BULLSHIT!
To make things really work for you, if you really want to avoid something try to throw it away so that its not within your reach anymore. That's exactly what I did.
Remember, I said Facebook has an easy process to reactivate your account. I found a way around so that I can't reactivate my account any more. Its not within my reach. Not anymore!
More to come on how to permanently on a temporarily basis deactivate your Facebook account.
Till then PHUCK Faceboo!K
