Farewell Facebook.

I want to start this the right way, the correct way. But I am not really sure there is one. So I’ll start, with what I usually do, when I first get on my computer. Once it is up and everything has loaded, the first thing I do is check email. I know that seems odd, in these days of social media, but it is a habit now. It is what I have been doing, since I first got on a computer, more than 15 yrs. ago. As I was looking and noticing that I once again had nothing new to see, I accidentally clicked on the right side of the email list, and somehow managed to end up at the first email I still have.  I then started glancing through the names, periodically stopping to take a glance, at this old email and that one, when I stopped upon the very first email, I received a reply from someone here, where this blog has lived for the last 7 yrs. You see I had just begun my blog here, and she was kind enough to reply to one of my first posts, so I sent her a “Thank You” email. Hoping it would encourage her to come back because I had taken the time. The idea worked, she came by and commented and I replied. Soon after, her friends were coming by and with time, I believe more people were coming by, not because of the astounding posts I was making, but because of the interaction they expected to get and indeed got. I replied to nearly every comment. In fact, when RSS feeds became the thing of the day, I was not surprised to discover, that more and more people subscribed to the comments feed, than the actual blog feed.

In fact, it grew so disproportional, that I eventually had to remove the RSS comments feed link. I began to realize that those people who were not visiting the website and getting to comment. were missing out on the most important part of the entire experience. They were completing missing out on the interaction.

Not going to state that the early days of Facebook reminded me of that, because the early days of Facebook, I had no friends there yet. In fact, I sent an invite to every one of my old friends before they arrived there. I am not saying they all discovered Facebook because of me or something egotistical like that. I am merely stating when I got there, none of them were there yet, and it was a lonely and barren place for me. But with time all things change and eventually they showed up, one by one, and the days of interacting once again were upon me. They were commenting and I was again replying, in my most sarcastic manner…life was good. But then the “Like” button appeared. I am pretty certain it was not always there. But perhaps it was and people just did not use it. People in general, seemed to still be, in the age of interaction. They seemed to still get that interacting with the OP( Original Poster) was the way to establish communication and develop any kind of real relationship.

As time passed by, the “Like” button, become more and more the predominant form of communication. Someone would see something you posted, but instead of adding their own original thoughts on the subject, they would simply click the button and in return for that small effort, they received the same on a post or two of theirs. But for you, as I sure you are beginning to see, the communication, the interaction, was totally lost in the process. Because you cannot reply to a “Like”. You can only give what you have received. The “like” button completely eliminated the need for communication. The need and desire to interact became non-existent. The “Like” button was not building any relationships. It was destroying all the essential elements required in creating them. It was this simple little button, that I believe, was the beginning of Facebook’s fall from grace. Facebook no longer was a place to find and make new friends. As Facebook aged, and more and more people began to simply just click the button, real interaction and communication took a huge down turn and people began to lose their sense of connectedness, to this site. People began to notice that they were no longer making connections. For awhile, I and many others, sat in denial of the facts. We did not want to see what was really taking place. But everyone eventually has to face the truth. It does not matter how ugly or unpleasant it might be, there always comes the day of reckoning. The day when we are forced to accept the hard and often cruel truth. It seems, I was one of those who accepted it later, and held on longer than most.

As I went through my purge earlier this week, I could not help but notice the number of friends I was blocking that simply had left. No words were spoken to me, or perhaps I simply missed the memo. They had seen that Facebook was no longer a place to make friends or build any kind of relationship. I, being the stubborn person that I am, thought somehow I could change the mindset of my friends on Facebook and thusly, wrote a series of posts aimed at emphasizing the importance of feedback. I even threatened to block them and then followed through, when nothing changed. All this was in vain though. It changed nothing. I now have fewer friends(that for the most part were not really friends anyway) and still mostly, just get the same results.

If you ignore all the evidence that stands before you, then you are a fool. I do not consider myself a fool and thusly, have decided that my time with Facebook is over. It is a complete waste of my time to be there, when the only forms of communication and interaction I am going to be getting, are going to be likes, pokes, and a rare message. I am far too old and have way too many things I need to accomplish, with what little time I remain upon this planet, to be wasting any of it on a site that does not promote any real interaction amoungst it’s members. Sadly, my eyes have now opened, and I clearly see the time to leave has come.

To those of you who still wish to remain friends, I can only offer a list of websites you should subscribe to( to be informed when there is a new post) and my personal guarantee that I will be genuine in every communication between us, as I always have been. To those of you who desire to go our separate ways…goodbye, good luck, and may life grant you all you desire. Here is a list of the websites, I will still be keeping for sure(not making any guarantees on how long).-

https://twitter.com/JB_Thomas Twitter account, mostly used to link sites.
https://axewielderx.wordpress.com/  My main blog. Nearly everything gets put here. All of my jokes, funny pics, and even my music can be heard here.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Axewielderx My host for all my videos.
http://www.reverbnation.com/lucidchaos My host of EVERY song I have created over the last 11 yrs.
http://authorjbthomas.wordpress.com/ The ONLY site where any of my writings exist.
http://naturalwildlifedesigns.wordpress.com/ A site where eventually, all the pics I have taken will be hosted. A work in progress…

Over the course of the next few days, I will be removing content from my Facebook personal and Band pages. I won’t deactivate the personal account because I use it to login at certain sites. Then I will simply be gone.

It is funny, that it was the last thing I said in that email I spoke of earlier, that finally made me decide to do this. It was this…”After all, if we spend our life alone, what have we lived for.”

Axe