FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST

Free at last! Free at Last!…
(With all due apologies to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

I disconnected my Facebook account recently. I am no longer friends with my friends. Sure feels good not having that to look at, get messages from folks I do not know, etc.

I feel better about disconnecting from Facebook than I did joining it. The only reason I joined Facebook was to try to find a friend from my Air Force days. Facebook served its purpose. I have his email address now so I don’t need the Facebook connection.

The only people I told about my disconnect from Facebook are two friends from high school, Mike and Peter. Mike is not on Facebook. Peter is and we became friends on Facebook. Somehow that is different than becoming friends over 40 years ago.

Peter responded to my declaration of freedom.
“Good for you. I was thinking the same thing about Facebook today -- but how do you "disconnect"? Do you send out one last message to everyone? Is there a protocol? Will your "friends" miss you?”

I took some time to find it, but there is a button to disconnect. You go to the help section and type 'disconnect' (Facebook talk for "get me out of this crap!"). They give you directions to the right spot to hit the disconnect button. Of course, if you aren't sure, they ask you if you aren't sure and then give you the opportunity to disconnect or disconnect permanently. Much like stopping the newspaper delivery while you are on vacation. You can always start up again where you left off. If you decide for the permanent disconnect, it goes into effect immediately but stays available for 14 days. At that time you will be disconnected permanently and your friends will be forever gone.

If you opt for the not so permanent disconnect, your profile and friend connections hang around longer than the 14 days of permanent disconnect.

There is probably a twelve-step program in this. You would have to join it online, but what the heck. One vice for another.

I don't know if there is a protocol to quitting Facebook. I quit. The friends haven't noticed. They weren't really my friends after all.

My wife didn’t know I had quit Facebook and she is my best friend. But, as she was going through her Facebook page after we got home the other night, she asks, "You quit Facebook?'

"Yep, how did you know?"

"Nancy says you dumped her." We hadn't seen Nancy in over 30 years. She was the adult altar minister at Barb's aunt's funeral. Nancy comes up to us after Mass and says, “You probably don't remember me but I remember you."

My wife and I had been in college with Nancy and were involved in campus ministry with her. Her Facebook note to Barb was something about not seeing us for over 30 years and then just days after my becoming her friend on Facebook, I dumped her. (Yet another woman scorned.)

So at least one friend missed me. Otherwise, Barb hasn't heard anything from any of our mutual friends. Your friends will only miss you if they happen to look at their list of friends and don’t find you there.

Mike responded to my notice of disconnect with the wisdom of a computer geek:

“Good man, punch that Facebook in the... Well you know. That is such a vector for malware. I love it. Security issues are my main source of business nowadays. But I don't want to get bit myself so I stay away from those nasty social sites.”

And the next day, Mike says,

“Since your Facebook withdrawal, thought you might like to know that you are not alone. Check out http://tinyurl.com/ydkf6fj.”

I did check it out and, according to the article; I have committed social networking suicide. This sounds terrible. But then I remembered that I live in Oregon and physician-assisted suicide is legal here so I can be free of guilt (social, moral or otherwise). My doctor told me to get off Facebook for health reasons. Or he would have, had I talked to him about it. Close enough.

So I am off Facebook, Mike has stayed away from it and Peter says,

“I just got added as a Friend by my baby sister. I can't quit now.”

Peter is right, of course. If your younger sibling wants to be your friend, you can’t say no. I have a younger brother who is on Facebook. He never responded to my request to be his friend. The request is probably still pending.

I don’t miss Facebook even more.