How Am I Spending My Time Off Facebook?

Mostly watching YouTube videos.

Have I Cheated and Checked into Facebook?

Man, it really has been hard to not break my pledge, my promise, and not log into Facebook.

I can't count the number of times that I've thought to myself, that to pop on, yeah, it'll be ok, it's cool, let's see whats going on.

And yet, I haven't.

Has it been easy?

Nope, but that was the whole point in this wasn't it?

Will I Ever Give Up Facebook for Lent Ever Again?

After Lent is over, and I make my triumphant return to Facebook, will I be giving it up for Lent ever again?

Um, hell no, this has been really hard to do, I really have to commend the people that do this every year. Seriously, how the hell you all do this, every year, I'll never know.

Maybe it's because of all the shit that's going on right now, with the COVID-19 pandemic happening, man, it's hard to put into words what is running through my mind right now.

Would I be a social media justice warrior squashing all the misinformation that is being shared right now? I really don't know, before I began this journey I was really starting to hate all of that. So, would I have gone into sharing more cute and de-stressing things instead? I really don't know.

All I can tell you is this, had I remained on Facebook during this time I would have joined the "stay at home" movement, hell I might have revived the live streaming broadcast for a virtual place for people to hang out, in fact the only reason I haven't done that is because I'm sticking to staying off of Facebook, which would have been my main avenue to promote it.

Since I've already given the short answer to the question above, would I do this again, which is no, now you have the longer answer, which is still no, especially since I feel the isolation that I've talked about in previous blogs in a BIG way.

Facebook has it's purpose, the site has a reason to exist, so now, at least for me is the bigger question, is it a site that we should constantly live on? How different will my relationship with the site when I log back on? We need social media, we are all connected, but does it need to be an obsession?

I think, or at least hope that it'll be very different than how it was before I began this journey. I've learned that while I do need Facebook to find out what's going on, how my friends are dealing with current events, and yes, to be kind of a bullshit buster, I don't need to constantly click back onto the website in an almost obsessive way.

While I do need Facebook, I don't need to come back to Facebook like I was before.

Maybe if nothing else I've learned that along the way.

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Ok, this space at the end of the blog was once show notes, then it turned into what the next blog post would be about, going forward this addendum will no longer exist.  I put a TBD on the last blog post because I didn't know what I was going to blog about, and I feel that way now, so, no further need to put a "preview" out there unless I feel like I should.

RIP Gambler

I've certainly spent more than enough time talking about modern music and how much of it sucks on this page over the years, but maybe not enough time talking about how some get it right, especially the old guard that actually had to pay their dues.

Kenny Rogers was certainly one of those guys.

From Wikipedia;

Kenneth Ray Rogers (August 21, 1938 – March 20, 2020) was an American singer, songwriter, actor, record producer, and entrepreneur. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Rogers was particularly popular with country audiences but also charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres, and topped the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone. He sold over 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His fame and career spanned multiple genres: jazz, folk, pop, rock, and country. He remade his career, and was one of the most successful cross-over artists of all time.

You picked a fine time to leave us, rest easy gambler.

Feeling Just a Bit Left Out

First, the missed notification update......

31 photo tags?  And ya'll have seen my current profile picture who in the hell sent me a friend request? Well, in a little less than a month I'll find out. Oh, and we're up to 61 missed notifications, with everything going on I don't doubt that things are a little busy on Facebook these days.


So, without further ado I'll dive into today's topic.

This one has been kind of hard to put into words but I'll give it a go.

I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts about how isolated I feel abstaining from Facebook, and even though I know many of the people on my friends list online only, I am wondering how everyone is doing, not to mention the family members that I've managed to find over the years.

With everything going on with the current COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, and just everything in general happening in the world today, me not currently using Facebook does have me really feeling disconnected in so many ways. I'm realizing that I get information from so many different posts, until I began this journey I was spending a ton of time on Facebook, and now, I really have to kind of dig for different viewpoints.

Another side effect is that so many official government agencies release information though Facebook, and the media picks it up from there, but I don't feel like I'm "in the loop" since I've gotten used to the almost instantaneous update from the various agencies I follow on Facebook. It's a good thing that I had signed up for newsletters, I've certainly been reading more of my emails lately.

One of the things I really miss right now is seeing the very different points of view on current topics. I know that I've mentioned it before but I have friends on Facebook with very differing points of views on things, I read the posts from all sides of a debate (did you know there are more than 2 sides to a story?) and from that form my own opinion.

I think that the boat analogy I used in one of my previous posts still stands.

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I haven't decided what the next blog post will be about, stay tuned.

Missed Notification Count

It's interesting, I haven't gotten one of these kinds of emails from Facebook since last Friday (3/6), since then the messages have been a bit more personal, such as "you've missed this post from so and so"

Anyway, since last Friday;

You can look at my previous blog post to see the last one, the difference in the amount of notifications is slowing, maybe that's why FB's emails have taken a more personal tone. I'll note in future blog posts how much that number might change between now and when I log back into Facebook.

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In the next blog post I'll talk more about the sense of isolation that I feel not being on Facebook.

Facebook, Why Do You Care?

So, ok Facebook, unless you see a login that you don't recognize, you haven't emailed me for years, why now?

(side note, I kept email notifications on in case my account becomes compromised while I'm off)

Obviously it's because I haven't logged in over a week. So, why do they care?

Well, honestly, I don't think that Facebook really cares or there is actually anyone at Facebook that actually gives a damn that I haven't logged into their site.

Let me start with this one;

Yep, it's a hoax, when you log into Facebook, you give them permission to use everything you post, everything you share, your photos, permission to plant cookies to see where else you go online, everything, how much and where only depends on your privacy settings but even ramping those up to maximum only protects you from other users, not so much the site itself.

You might be wondering how you gave them this much power over what you post, well, it's in their Terms of Service, which you may or may not have read over before you signed up on the site.

My bet entire? Most people don't read it, even though they clicked the link that said they did. When you do that, well, to be honest, it's on you, since you checked yes that you did read the terms of service.

You said yes to Facebook planting cookies and monitoring how you use the internet. Sorry, you did.

So, let's get back to the original question, which is why do they care?

Well, it's not that they actually "care" so much as they are missing out on data on you that they can package and sell. Keep in mind that while, at least for the end user, Facebook is free at the end of the day they have to pay the bills somehow.

Think of all the data breaches Facebook has had over the years, it really is a treasure trove for those who would want to steal it.

Simply put, when someone who uses Facebook stops, it's one less data point for them to mine and sell. One person obviously isn't such a big deal, but a group of people depending on who they are, well, that might hurt a bit.

I wonder if the people running Facebook have a term for this time of year when people give it up for Lent?

Just a thought.

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Next blog post, let's keep a tally, I get emails on what I'm missing on Facebook, let's start keeping track on missed messages and notifications.

How I'm Keeping Up With My Facebook Friends While Off of Facebook

After you don't log into Facebook for more than a day they start sending you emails every day telling you what you are missing out on.

8 Messages? I didn't get that many when I used to log in everyday. I mean, how the hell did people miss this as my profile pic?

I have a theory, maybe people are looking for me on Facebook messenger, unfortunately I never installed that on my phone, but that is my guess for now until I log back in. For those who don't know Facebook Messenger apparently runs as kind of it's own thing, where your Facebook friends can message you off of Facebook. Kinda like other IM programs I suppose. I don't actually have it myself so I don't know, I'm just guessing.

So, let's answer the question, how am I keeping up with my Facebook friends since I'm not currently using Facebook? Um, well, I'm not. As I said before I didn't grab Messenger on my way out so I kinda cut myself off from the whole thing. I did drop links to this blog as well as my Twitter account but as far as I know no one has been by (and if ya do happen to drop in say hi in a comment down below!)

Do I miss my Facebook friends? Yes, some more than others of course but absolutely. I had cultivated a friends list that I'm quite proud of, people from many walks of life not to mention all the family members that I've added along the way. I wonder how people are doing, is this person ok, how's such and such going with so and so, we share so much on Facebook and even as I sit here now, yes, there are 180 people that I'm thinking about wondering how they are doing.

It's weird, but I feel sort of isolated.

Let me try to paint a picture; let's say you are on a boat, and let's make it a cabin cruiser since those are kinda cool, and you hang out on your boat in a lake with several dockside bars. The bar you usually go to is called "Facebook" since that's where all your buddies are and you've been going there for a long time. You sometimes go to the other dockside bars on the same lake, mostly "The Twitter" and "Jack's Place" (my name for this blog in this make believe scenario) but most of the time you go to the Facebook.

So, you are on your boat in the middle of this lake and decide to stop going to Facebook even though that's where all your buddies are, and that leaves just the other two bars. Folks at The Twitter are friendly but it's not the same crowd and the folks that are there are certainly welcoming enough even though it isn't your usual hangout and nobody goes to Jacks Place, mostly because he's kinda lazy and hasn't updated it much lately so it leaves you just kinda hanging out on your boat in the middle of the lake, looking over at the Facebook bar wondering if you should just stop in or stick to your pledge to not stop by, knowing all the while that you'll stick to your pledge since it might be giving you time to do other things, like fix up Jack's Place or go fishing :)

Anyway, that's kind of what it's like, hopefully you understand it better when I mention that I kinda feel isolated. Of course I'm going to see it through, as I said in my first post when I started this journey which is simple, I give up things for Lent to honor Jesus' sacrifice in the desert, yes, but also as a way to improve myself, so that, when it's over and I come back to the thing that I gave up I manage it better, maybe use it for the constructive ways that it can be used instead of, at least in the case of Facebook, a time waster.

And I said this one would be short. I guess not so much, I'll stop promising that lol.

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The next blog post will be about my theories as to why Facebook starts sending out emails telling you what you missed since you last logged into the site, including my thoughts on their data mining.