Web 2.0 Suicide Machine

[Jordan]

http://suicidemachine.org/ (no, not the ska-punk band)

Tops off your facebook/Myspace/twitter/LinkedIn page while scrubbing all of your info. Apologies to anybody who may find all of the suicide language on that site insensitive, but the words are not my choice.

I'm equivocating on whether or not to kill my Facebook page. Most of my reasons for doing so are the same as others (it's addictive, promotes the sharing of stupid information, keeps me stuck to my phone or my PC, will give me more time to "live life" etc). On the other hand, in 2010, Web 2.0 and social networking is just a part of life and often a quite convenient way to connect with others.

Two things that happened today, however, are pushing my internet me towards joining the ranks of the deceased.

1) My roommate sent me a message and started a Facebook chat with me when we were in the same apartment. We were sitting 25 feet away from each other, yet the first mode of contact I received from her was via computer. And in the end, we had to finish the discussion face-to-face anyway because we had to test the spare keys to our apartment doors.

2) I went to look at something on my Facebook profile, and Big Blue Brother popped up a screen nudging me to "like" "pages" for everything I had listed on my profile. First, I find the whole like/pages thing annoying and really don't want to do it. Second, to the best of my knoweldge, this is all part of Facebook's new plan to make everything on the intertubes "Like"-able, all part of a clever way to ensnare the whole web and also gather information relevant to marketers that would like to sell me lots and lots of things.

Have any of you committed your own Web 2.0 suicide or otherwise ditched your social networking sites? How's life been since? If I were to go through with this, you think it would make life better, or just make me a pretentious, sanctimonious, Luddite asshole?

(btw I'd keep my FoxesTalk account--had that long before I signed up Facebook :thumbsup: )

[hairy]

I dont have facebook and never house. My wife has and loves a good snoop into what everyone else is doing. I get by very well without one and really dont want one.

There was an article on the BBC website magazine section not so long back about a girl who gave up her account and how she got on. In the end she just rationed herself on it using it purely to organise her social diary.

[Trav Le Bleu]

I'm much the same as Hairy on this, and I agree with you about the "like" thing you explained (I've very little experience of Facebook)... people get upset if you don't like the same things as them. Why? Everyone will end up like Jo Whiley and Fearne Cotton... constantly trying to like what everyone else likes (with no thought to the fact that one person's "like" is another person's "hate" )

Maybe try rationing yourself at first Jordan? If you can't resist then it's an addiction and surely ALL addictions are bad? An addiction basically means that you haven't got control of your own life. So if you keep going back, then do it. Kill it off.

[Alexikokopops]

I dont have facebook and never house. My wife has and loves a good snoop into what everyone else is doing. I get by very well without one and really dont want one.

There was an article on the BBC website magazine section not so long back about a girl who gave up her account and how she got on. In the end she just rationed herself on it using it purely to organise her social diary.

This is one of the reasons I keep it. It does make organising social events with a fair few people a lot easier, as well as sharing photos.

[Jordan]

This is one of the reasons I keep it. It does make organising social events with a fair few people a lot easier, as well as sharing photos.

When weighing the good/bad about Facebook, for me, the convenience of it all is its biggest asset. Let's say I want to throw a party. It's really easy to create an event on FB and send out an invite to a lot of people with just a few clicks and keystrokes.

(Devil's advocate would say that I'd have phone #s and email addresses of anyone that I'd want to invite to my party anyway)

Speaking of Facebook, a lot of people I know also really use Facebook very frequently, and that's a big reason why I, too, use it frequently. Out of all the people I'm friends/friendly with under the age of 35, I can only think of one person that doesn't use FB. Many of these people have also replaced most of their phone calls, texts and emails with facebook communiqués (which I suppose makes sense now that everybody has FB on their mobiles).

But I do find so much of the FB experience rather soulless and homogenous (not to mention valid concerns about privacy--not that FB's staff are gonna snoop around my account, but rather all of the info they feed to advertisers).

First steps: unsubscribed from Facebook email notifications, deleted FB Blackberry app, deleted FB bookmarks on mobile and PC browsers and sent out a status update telling people that since I'm not receiving notifications, if you want a response from me you ought to hit up my phone or email instead. I'll see where this goes next.

[FoxyPV]

One of the things I hate about FB is people messaging you about events that are arranged for that night etc as it relies on you checking your FB continually. Just send me a text or give me a ring - Easy.

It's good to keep in contact with friends who live abroad, and those you don't see too often. I think it's a bit like window shopping as you can see who's up to what but you don't have to do anything.