Andy's Blog

For those of you not geek enough to know what the above actually means, it translates from computer speak to; “Life does not equal Facebook”

You would think, from the barrage of emails I have received, that my decision to remove myself from the facebook world was akin to jumping off a cliff with a pitiful wail of “Goodbye cruel world….”

I think in retrospect if I was to ever jump of a cliff I would try my absolute hardest to make that funny “waaahoohohoooo” noise that cartoon characters make – what a way to go… and be remembered

Actually, the reason I decided to remove myself from facebook was pretty much the opposite of trying to remove myself from life, more to try and re-engage in it.  I don’t think it was only me, but I started to find that;

• I was spending an inordinate amount of time just flicking back to facebook, almost unconciously, checking what people were upto, moving my cars in parking wars and numerous other little games that I would be invited to.
• It ‘seemed’ that I had started living my life in one line status updates at a time.  A case of life imitating facebook, instead of the other way round.  This also led to an absolute glut of maudlin status updates!
• More importantly, and the main reason why I decided to remove facebook, I was starting to use facebook as my main source of information about friends and family, rather than actually just speaking or visiting them.

This last point was the more important to me.  It was proving too easy to just see how a friend was, post a witty or consoling one line comment under their status update and feel that somehow you had done your bit as a friend, etc.

I think it’s time I picked up the phone a little more, or even better visit those friends I haven’t actually seen for a long while – to tear myself away from the computer and to engage with life a little more than I am at the moment…

Radical eh?