It’s not really all that social here anymore.

I’m done letting Facebook tell me what a “Friend” really is.

I’m done letting Facebook tell me what a “Friend” really is.

I’ve had a Facebook account for nearly half my life. During that time, I’ve accumulated over a thousand Facebook Friends. In a way, my Friends list is a monument to all the people who have entered my life, and changed it in some way, whether through an adventure we had together, a community we shared, or just finding out that we had something unexpected and delightful in common.

But as the collection has grown, I’ve found myself having fewer and fewer meaningful, engaging, authentic interactions on Facebook itself. At first I chalked it up to just being busy — I don’t have time for anything other than skimming through social media to see what other people are up to. Then I chalked it up to privacy concerns — Facebook has shown time and time again that it’s willing to abuse its users trust, and the internet is a permanent record.

Nowadays, I’m not sure any of those things are the actual cause. I’ve concluded that Facebook is not nourishing any of my relationships; if anything, it is a knockoff-brand facsimile of sustenance. (There is a whole side-rant here about Facebook destroying democracy and exacerbating various genocides, but I’ll leave that for another day.)

Facebook is (and maybe always was) performative — my most valuable interactions happen in smaller, private settings, whether it’s a Zoom call to catch up with people or one of the many Signal group chats I’m in.

Literally zero high-quality political discussions happen on Facebook. I mean it. Zero. I’ve never changed anyone’s mind (and no one’s ever changed my mind) through Facebook comments. One of the main reasons I’ve held out as long as I have is because I don’t want to end up in an intellectual bubble, but you know what? All of my meaningful conversations about politics with folks whose views differ from mine have occurred outside of Facebook. Generally in person. Generally over a beer or ten.

Moving Forward

No, I’m not deleting my Facebook account entirely. I am scaling it back to the level of utility I get out of it. I also realize that I’m doing the same thing that sometimes mildly offends me, when people are like “I’m deleting everyone I’m not super close with!” and then I find myself deleted even though the only reason we became friends in the first place was because we were both standing in line at a taco stand or whatever and haven’t interacted since 2016. I’ve increasingly become a believer in Dunbar’s Number, which more or less states that a human can only hold about 150 meaningful relationships at any point in time.

If we’ve got a mutual Dunbar overlap, then we’re probably already connected on Signal, Houseparty, WhatsApp, or Instagram. If you’re super into the idea of sticking it to The Man and want to experiment with more decentralized technologies, there’s also Mastodon.

If you want to be on the receiving end of my opinions, I write technical nerdy things on Substack and I tweet a lot.

If you read this and delete our Facebook connection, good for you! I appreciate you for whatever reason got us connected on Facebook in the first place, but hey — sometimes it’s good to know when to call it a day.