On why I really quit Facebook.

I made my little “sayonara, suckers!” post, which was full of little truths (I am happy to leave behind the hopelessly confused your/you’re users and there are a lot of idiots on there posting stupid stuff), but there are bigger reasons I quit Facebook.

It made me unhappy, mostly.

I would occasionally catch myself all caught up in my little Facebook game. It mostly consisted of Oh, this girl is pretty. Let me look through all her pictures until I feel extremely ugly and bad about myself. That sounds like fun!

Or I’d go look at my own page and see that the only people who’d written on my wall in months were family members and I’d feel lame about my lack of friends. And I thought, Am I really basing my self-worth on what’s on Facebook? It might sound silly, but I think we’re all a little concerned with our internet personas. Almost everyone has their online persona (whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, a blog, etc) and it might not differ too much from who you really are, but you are not really the same online as you are in person. You can do so much editing online that you can’t do in real life. You can make yourself seem a lot more perfect, pretty, fun, etc. by what you put on your Facebook profile. [Blogger Sarah is not the same as IRL Sarah. There are shared qualities, but IRL Sarah is afraid to offend anyone. I would never speak up about half the crap I talk about on here to actual people, and stuff like that. I’m also quite sure I am much more attractive in the pictures I take and post than I am in person. And that’s because I can take them over and over until they’re juuuust right. Also I suck a great deal at speaking. I am much better at writing. Anyway.]

I’d look at stuff people were posting on Facebook (pictures of trips they’d been on, all their comments to friends, etc.) and I’d roll my eyes and think, I don’t give a fuck about this stuff. Except I gave a lot of fucks. A lot! How come I didn’t have those great things going on in my life?

And so it became more of a torture device than something I used to catch up with 300+ “friends”. Let’s see who’s happier than me today! … Oh, good, everybody!

But you know those people aren’t that happy. There are the poor unfortunate souls who try to garner sympathy with vague statuses about how unhappy they are, but for the most part, Facebook is a lot of people — not everyone, but a good amount — trying to show you how awesome their life is even when it’s not actually that awesome.

I had a really effing great weekend with Robbie. Like amazing. And I’m not afraid to say that Robbie and I have one of the best relationships of anyone I know. But I found myself thinking, Man, Robbie and I didn’t take any pictures of our weekend — and it wasn’t because I wanted any to frame for my room. It was because I wanted to post them to the internet! HEY EVERYONE LOOK HOW GOOD WE LOOKED AS WE WENT OUT TO CELEBRATE OUR FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY. (We did look really great, so just try to picture it.) PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS PICTURE TO VALIDATE MY BELIEF THAT WE’RE PERFECT AND CUTE. Ugh, that’s annoying, isn’t it? Needing approval from people about things you already know are good. That’s why overly-sentimental wall posts between couples make me so stabby. You have no idea how much I’d like to post cute things to Robbie’s wall from time to time, as much as I claim to abhor this kind of activity. But I always stop myself because I know that it’s attention-seeking behavior. Oh, I hope people think we’re totally adorbs because of this! I don’t need five “Likes” to confirm that we are indeed adorbs. I already know we are, but for some reason I need other people to think so too. As if there’s some sort of Best Couple Award based on how much attention people give you via the internet.

And that’s why Facebook sucks. That’s why the whole internet sucks sometimes. I’m not quite ready to give up Twitter and Tumblr, but it’s true. Many of us are too concerned with what everyone else is doing and how other people perceive us when we really need to focus on what’s good in our own lives. It’s such an easy concept but one that’s so hard to master. I don’t know if I’ll ever get good at it, but I’m glad I at least recognize the problem and I think eliminating the distractions from what’s good in my own life is a step in the right direction.