FaceAche

Anti-Social Media.

I have been off of Facebook for a few weeks. I must admit to twiddling my thumbs having nothing much else to do now that I have cast myself adrift but I absolutely had to get out of there for a while. I deactivated it and….the ‘silence’ is truly deafening. I have been on that site since 2009 and I have been extremely active. I looked after several groups and pages, often taking rather a lot of time and effort to get it ‘just right’ and it really took a toll on me. I enjoyed that and had some fun along the way but I have noticed that not many people appreciate just how much goes into it.

Sifting through adverts for impossible objects and absolute obscenity in order to keep the groups on topic and not a cavalcade of cack. I’ve had personal insults and threats which I took fairly seriously. I’d done nothing to deserve such opprobrium and yet, I was in the crosshairs of the online nutcase community.

More than anything, I just wanted a few regular electro-chums to get along with online. A few long distance laughs and sharing the good stuff such as music, videos etc. You know the way of it. Alongside that, I was hoping that I might be able to get my shabby old Podcast a bit of a boost. I wasn’t expecting to reach the giddy heights with it but I tried to get people to share it for me in order to boost the meagre audience that it garnered. Try as I might, I could get no traction at all. I guess that it shows that people are on Social Media for themselves alone and are not that into whatever it is that you are doing. I stopped Podcasting and nobody noticed. I even tried to put together a ‘stunt’ as a final and desperate ‘hoorah’ for my endeavours but I got virtually no interest. I’m not going to bother with that anymore.

So, my time away from Facebook has been a difficult one. Somewhat isolated and wondering whether or not I have made a big mistake in deactivating the profile. It actually took ages before anyone at all had noticed that I had vanished. Other lives go on and so does mine. I guess that I had just invested too much of myself into what is, at best, meant to be a pastime. Did I take it all too seriously? I think not as I always attempted to be entertaining and a ‘listening ear’ to people if they required it. In short, I think that I was pretty good at the whole game but I must take a step back and use it a great deal more sparingly from now on.

I’ll be back…although I have most likely shot myself in the foot with this brief article. Well, if honesty offends, were we ever real friends?