I deactivated my Facebook a few days ago. I think it’s mostly a matter of improving the signal to noise ratio rather than anything specific. And it certainly does do that. Facebook is about 98% noise, as far as I can tell. I was thinking a lot about how people are influenced by social media, and while I like to think I am fairly self-aware when it comes to these things, I had to wonder why I still used it and to weigh the pros and cons. I’ll probably reactivate at some point just because everyone on Earth seems to use it, but for the time being, everything is great.
Am I getting things done? Sometimes. It’s not like Facebook was the only place on the internet to waste hours. But it was really the only unending stream of bullshit in my life. I think I may have been on to something when I thought about deactivating most of each day and reactivating for a few hours here and there, but that’s way too much work.
I don’t like or trust their algorithms. I wouldn’t mind being more in charge of what I am looking at and reading throughout the day. I work on the computer so I am on it a lot, and when things are slow there is a temptation to waste time on Facebook. It’s easy to do, and, unlike Amazon, it usually doesn’t cause me to spend any money.
The past few months have been disastrous, health-wise, and I have worried that I’d end up in the hospital again for skin issues. Thankfully, this did not happen, but since the doctors want so badly to reduce the corticosteroids, things got pretty fucking bad before they could be convinced to do anything that would actually help things (=more corticosteroids). And I’ve been having trouble making phone calls at all, but this has improved in the past week or two. And it seems like everyone on earth is trying to take all my money, which is stressful. Also, I dislike holidays and think they often tend to bring out the worst in people.
Things aren’t especially bad, but there is always a feeling of dread of the future, I suppose. I could try to be positive but it makes me feel like a fraud, and I think I’m just programmed this way.
