This week I got rid of an old friend. Actually I got rid of hundreds of old friends, all with the touch of a button. Because I deleted my longstanging Facebook account.
When I did it, I didn’t know that it was Facebook’s 20th anniversary on Sunday 4th Feb. But that suits me fine. Here’s my gift to you, Mark Zuckerberg. A big goodbye kiss.
Actually, I don’t want to be cynical about Facebook. Not yet, anyway. It was a great, world changing and arguably world-improving idea. The idea of a global network of friends, as economic globalisation was becoming turbo charged, made perfect sense. When it was first launched, I was a big fan and spent plenty of time looking up old friends I had lost contact with making connections with people I knew only slightly and had hope of building a relationship with. It was exciting.
Now it’s like any relationship that goes bad after too long , it’s irritating and life sapping, Last week, when I opened my Facebook page for the final time I was struck by how many of my ‘friends’ I didn’t know at all. I had nothing in common with them. Most of them, from what I could tell, I wouldn’t much like even if I met them. So what was I doing on the site in the first place?
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