The Pros and Cons of Deleting Your Facebook

Ever since I had the audacity to ask the question “Is Facebook Over?“, my life has been turned upside down. I have found myself wandering the city not knowing my left from my right, only to end up passed out in the dryer of a Chinese laundromat. My mental breakdown was triggered not from an unwise mixture of Ambien and pot brownies, but from the harsh realization that I might have to delete my Facebook very soon. Because in the past year alone, it has done the following things to me:

Number of times it has caused me to hate an acquaintance just a little bit more by reading their unnecessary status updates: 281

Number of times it has given me the unsettling feeling of being left out by looking at pictures of my friends at parties I wasn’t invited to: 198.

Number of times it has delayed my emotional progress by allowing me to lurk no good very bad people I’ve cut from my life: 304.

Number of times I’ve felt paranoid that Mark Zuckerberg has sold my identity to a marketing company in Asia: 70.

Number of hours I have spent just staring in anticipation of that red number to come up and indicate I have a new message: THAT IS PRIVATE AND SHAMEFUL INFORMATION. LEAVE ME ALONE.

Like with any major decision, one must make a pros and cons list. So that’s what I did. I made a pros and cons list for deleting my Facebook. Yup. Because that’s what life is like for a gurl in 2011, okay? Sigh.

Pro: I will be an overall more productive person

Con: I will be a very bored productive person.

Pro: I will no longer have to read status updates from a girl in my high school about it being a beautiful day in Fresno today.

Con: I will no longer be able to laugh at status updates from a girl in my high school about it being a beautiful day in Fresno today.

Pro: I don’t know anything about my exes.

Con: I don’t know anything about my exes!

Pro: I will no have to field invitations from some event promoter about his party.

Con: I might miss an invite to an actual party I want to go to. And people won’t bother to tell me in person because they’ll assume I have a Facebook. OMG, we are just all technology’s bitch!

Pro: My family members on Facebook will no longer know about the times I get drunk and post a status update about it.

Con: There is absolutely no con to that.

Pro: I will no longer become unhealthily obsessed with people I don’t know.

Con: Strangers will no longer be able to get unhealthily obsessed with me.

Pro: I will have an air of mystery about me.

Con: People might forget that I exist.

People forgetting about my existence is what really gets to me. If I went to a party or on a vacation and didn’t document it on my Facebook, did it really happen? Does it just chip away at my presence as a human being and force me to wear an invisibility cloak? I know all of this is crap. I know that I don’t even lurk my close friends on Facebook. Instead, we see each other IRL, talk on the phone and communicate on Gchat. Facebook has no influence on the relationships that actually matter to me. It’s the people on the periphery who get to stick around past their expiration date. If I deleted it, those are the kinds of people who would become casualties. And who cares, right? Let them fade away! I have almost 800 friends on Facebook, but only hang out with a handful of people in real life. Isn’t that bizarre? Who are these 790 friends of mine? When’s the last time we actually hung out? Do I even know them? If I don’t, why would I want them to know me?

All of this rhetoric is making me want to simultaneously delete my Facebook and check to see if I have any new messages. Regardless of my decision, I think we can all agree that Facebook has messed with my generation’s lives in a very real way. It has dictated our day to day lives by creating new social rules and etiquette we must abide by. It’s basically turned us into paranoid neurotic messes who are afraid of a real human connection. Mark, why do you have such contempt for us?