FB – The Sabbatical

Greetings All…

Hope this post finds you well. It has been an interesting past two weeks. A few things sort of came to an apex and caused me to make a decision one evening that reflects the graphic you see above.

Lessee, it all started with some podcast commentary by a good friend Ray Garraud, who hosts “The Garraud Files Podcast”. In Episode 14, he extemporaneously spoke on his thoughts regarding social media fatigue. He made some great points which reminded me of a phone conversation a few months on how much social media is consumed by people today. It definitely got me to think, more than usual, about my own rate of daily consumption. It was, then, a week ago that I was listening to an episode of Kojo Nnamdi’s Tech Tuesday Show on WAMU.org. A good part of the 07 May episode of The Computer Guys (and Gal) talked about using and/or unplugging from FB and Twitter.

[THIS JUST IN: I just noticed yesterday’s (14 May) episode entitled “Unplugged: Overcoming Our Digital Obsession” !! Maybe I should listen to that before finishing this post! How ironic, LOL]

In any event, I thought of the time spent on FB (particularly) and what is was gaining me. My FB habits have never really been like most users. I rarely page hop, keep a very low friends list count compared to many, and generally share tech posts and participate in music fan pages. What I did notice that for me, it began to become a time sink – checking posts during the day, checking messages and posts at night and (unfortunately) being exposed to others drama (very childish). As mentioned, things I wanted to accomplish (and complained I didn’t have the time for) were not moving forward as a result.

By Tuesday night, I left FB and interestingly enough, haven’t missed it at all. I’ve learned (thus far) that I wasn’t attached to it as I thought. Oddly enough, I dont think I’ll ever leave Twitter though (#earlyadopter), and ADN is my new spot, a fresh and clean community similar to Twitter, but about engagement (tech and otherwise), without the branding and ads! (free to join, by invite only (thanks again, Ray) :-). Will I come back to FB? Maybe. It is certainly a good place to connect, but for now, I’d like to reap whatever benefits I receive from this sabbatical.

Take care….
F!

About Fresh

Mac Fan/Sys. Engr - NASA planetary missions. guitarist/producer/AFOL/fitness fan/film+TV+sndtrk composer/podcast host/Python newbie coder. Music by me: http://SFTF.bandcamp.com. Mellowly Cool. Find me on X and Bluesky
This entry was posted in Daily Musings, Social Networking and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to FB – The Sabbatical

  1. Madeline says:

    Hey Doug,

    We’ve discussed this, but good for you for reducing your digital footprint from Facebook. As you know, I took this step back in March and haven’t looked back! As you mentioned, once you spend time checking posts, reading your timeline, responding to messages, chatting – and sometimes dealing with complete and utter foolishness, before you know it, you’ve wasted hours being unproductive thus neglecting what is important.

    I hope you are enjoying your regained hours from FB as much as I am!
    😉

    Ttys!

    Madeline

  2. Fresh says:

    Madeline….

    Thanks for the reply. Enjoying it indeed.

  3. rezzy says:

    Yeah, definitely feel you on this, bro! I haven’t deleted my FB account, but still rarely go there anymore. The stupid “timeline” didn’t do anything to help, IMO.

    It seems its novelty has worn a bit, and Zuck’ waited too long to take FB public.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.