Today I woke up to a relatively normal day in Berlin - grey, slightly overcast and breezy. But for some inexplicable reason it was different. I found myself thinking about facebook.
And for some unexplicable reason, I was angry at it. Very.
Who knows what I had been dreaming of, but all I could think of that morning was what I could have done with all those hours I have dedicated to clicking through "friend" after "friend" after "friend" (436 of them I may add) and looking at their statuses, roaming through their drunken party photographs or overall happy-go-lucky pictures of them. Wheee, look at me, I'm cute! Wheeeeee, look at me, I'm sassy with equally sassy girlfriends!
It dawned on me, I am officially a stalker... and my guess is also a stalkee?
Why am I not having real conversations with these people any more? Why am I not chatting with them in person about their fun party nights, or how their children are, or how cute they were as a baby when they dressed up as a carrot on Halloween?
At lunchtime I did it. Account > Account Settings > Deactivate Account. *gulp* I click on it.
Facebook tells me that my 436 friends will not be able to contact me anymore. Because I don't have email, or a phone number, nor do I actually have real social interaction with these people. Come on, Facebook... give me a break, I am not some anti-social cat lady yet.
Then Facebook points out SPECIFIC friends who will miss me: Anne will miss you, Beau will miss you, Roman will miss you, Lars-Christopher will miss you. And to add to the emotional value the evil minx that is Facebook posts pictures of said friends. Shall we have some violins in the background please?
I click again. Yes, I am sure I want to deactivate my account. SHOOT. Now I have to type in my password. Yes, I am still sure... *click*
Then one of those weird robot confirmation word thingies pops up. I couldn't deal with it anymore. Luckily my coworker helped me seal the deal as I looked away, wincing. It was done. Deactivated.
I felt a void immediately. This is where this blog comes in, what to do with all this "extra" time I have now? Call it a fantasy, but part of me feels that if I hadn't had Facebook ever since I came to Germany I would be able to speak the language now.
No matter what, it will be interesting.
(who knows, I may wake up tomorrow with some new "revelation" about Facebook that will make me re-activate it immediately... I can be pretty fickle like that.)
