Good Or Shit Facebook

It happens all the time. You come across a hilarious GoT meme, or perhaps it's a poignant quip at Christianity's expense posted by God, or a politically savvy poster designed by GetUp, an Avaaz campaign, a great music video, an interesting article, trailer, book release, cause, or a photo of yourself standing outside of Mr Darcy's house from the 1995 BBC television production of Pride and Prejudice that you and your friends all loved. Your impulse is to find the friend this would interest and do a up a little post –  'saw this, thought of you'. But how often has that line progressed to 'and then I couldn't find you because you deleted your facebook'?

Yes, yes, I know there are other ways to share things with people. You can email the link, or text it, hey, you can even cut the article out of a print version of the newspaper and post it in the mail like my grandfather does. If I want to get at you, I can. So why delete your account?

It can't just be that people want to be incommunicado for a few days because, unless you've changed your number, deactivated your email, and moved in with the hermit from Tomorrow When the War Began – you're not incommunicado, are you?

“I needed a break” we say. But a break from what? From GoT memes? What is so bad that a person feels the need to go to such great lengths? That closing the tab or logging out won't suffice?

I read an article the other day about Facebook addiction that someone had ironically posted on Facebook. There was all this stuff in there about how Facebook and the internet are destroying our attention spans, but I won't go in to that here because it would be the quickest way to lose yours. It was all very interesting. Especially the part about Facebook fostering a culture of anxiety-inducing insecurity and envy. Someone from high school you never really liked is a super successful publicist/artist/athlete in New York – can't bear it. Your best friend is holidaying somewhere amazing and you're always broke- it's so unfair! Your friends are discussing how they would never put up with a partner who is a wanker and you suspect your partner is a wanker – what's wrong with me?

I sympathise. I am not above a bit of insecurity and envy, feeling tortured by my newsfeed until I'm taken by anxiety.  I didn't look at my Facebook for three days (THREE!) after a close friend of mine got married because I didn't want to see the photos of all my friends having fun, together, without me, when I couldn't afford the flight home. I was so upset and envious that I was overcome by an urge to grab my Facebook and tear it into tiny little pieces before setting fire to them. But that would have been difficult. So I just logged out.

My boyfriend went to his hometown for the weekend to catch up with his friends and family. He said he'd call me while he was there – yeah, didn't. The evidence of how much fun he was having – so much so that a little phone call to his rad girlfriend would have been a real drag – popped up on my news feed. “Glad you're having fun” I responded to his in-lieu-of-a-phone-call text, but it was a lie soaked in passive aggression. I was not glad at all. “De-friend him,” my housemate advised. But I thought that was a little bit extreme, so I just closed the Facebook tab.

 Both these instances of intense anti-Facebook reaction reveal that I'm home sick and missing my friends and my family.  I envy them for being able to be together and sometimes, like, occasionally, become enormously insecure of whether they're either forgetting me and/or judging my life choices. And I envy my having-too-much-fun-to-call-you boyfriend because if he wants to go home, it's 4.5 hours away from London by bus.

Yeah, seriously, fuck all of you. Fuck all of you and your stupid happiness. I'm deleting my Facebook account.

Nah, I'm not really. It's not necessary. It's not Facebook that is the problem, it's me. The only time looking at Facebook makes me feel like shit is when I feel shit about myself, it's a testament to something that is going on within me and simply deleting my account won't help me to work through and overcome what issues those may be.  When looking at content on Facebook and finding yourself overcome with rage, envy, insecurity, despair, anxiety, whatever, a whole host of negative emotions, ask yourself – why are you so upset about this? Sit back, reflect on it, discuss it with a friend over a cup of tea, go for a walk, pick it apart, work through it. And just log out.Good Or Shit