Why I Deleted My Facebook Account

Simply: it got to be too much.

Too much noise, too much data, too many people, too many dissenting voices.  It began to seem to me that each time I logged on (which, incidentally, was far too often), there was more to know about everyone I know, and everything everyone was doing was somehow happening with greater and greater speed. And because I knew I was missing updates from many of my nearest and dearest (owing as much to the vast quantities of data scrolling down my monitor as well as to the whimsically sporadic nature of a system keen to capture our every interest and action and then sell them back to us), I felt pressured to catch up with each session. So it began to feel like a chore, albeit one that helped keep me in touch with friends and family.

Except then, in an effort to simplify, I started hiding people. People whose updates annoyed me. For instance, if you quote Mariah Carey or any other singer I dislike, I probably hid you. If all of your profile photos included your cleavage, I probably hid you. If I don’t really know you, I probably hid you. Let me offer my apologies–I really like you and perhaps even love you, but I began to feel that some sort of filter was crucial. And, eventually, I realized the only real solution was to scrap the whole thing.

Inane? Yes. One might say I’ve been doing it wrong, and that would be a fair observation. That’s okay.

Bad for business? Nah, not likely. Most of my business comes from online and word-of-mouth referrals.

Will I be losing touch with some people I genuinely like? This is the only part that concerns me. Yeah, I likely will be losing touch with those people.  But I’m still quite reachable: via phone, via email, via Twitter.

You know what it feels like, since hitting that delete button? Like I turned off a blaring stereo. There’s this gorgeous, rich silence.