Outbound – Destination Greece

Selected the option to permanently delete my Facebook account at 00:01 last night, and have been told that I have fourteen days to change my mind before my profile is gone forever.  For a while I thought that it would mean that I’d still be able to use my profile for two weeks and would remain visible online, which would have been awkward as I’d already announced to the world that I wouldn’t be there anymore, but as it is I can only get into the account if I say that I didn’t really mean it.

But I do mean it.  I really do.

The only thing is that I had an unsent reply to a message someone had sent me open in another window that I’d forgotten about.  But I’m not sure that really mattered either because I think all my messages should vanish once I’m no longer on Facebook anyway, so there’s a chance they’d never have got it anyway.

But in other news, I’ve also left the country.  Typing this on my flight from Dublin to Athens where I’m spending just over twenty-four hours, before going back to Kefalonia for the month of June to volunteer once again with the Katelios Group on the south of the island.  Spent June 2009 patrolling the beach and trying to make it as inviting as possible for nesting loggerhead sea-turtles (or careta-caretas for those of you more comfortable with Latin names), and enjoyed it so much that I’m on my way back for a second helping of turtle fun.  A big part of the attraction is the daily kicking down of sandcastles, which can put off, obstruct or otherwise deter our easily-spooked shelled friends from coming onto the beach and laying their eggs.

The plan, as it stands, is to arrive in Athens this evening, spend tomorrow visiting my old place of work, meeting a few of my former students for coffee or lunch, in the afternoon, as well as another batch of them in the evening, and then hopefully catching some old friends for dinner.  That last bit is uncertain as I haven’t really heard from many of them in a while – mostly due to poor organisation on my part.  I’m also going to be meeting up with some first-time volunteers that will be arriving in Athens tomorrow over various times of the day, and I’ll be more or less leading the team down to Kefalonia on Thursday.  I imagine that they already think I’m a bit strange, seeing as I had been organising everything through a group Facebook message and have now disappeared from that two days ahead of our first rendez-vous in Athens.  I did warn them I’d be disconnecting, but their first impressions still probably aren’t that good.  I’d already set and announced the date for the shut-down when I was only planning to make my own way down and before realising there were more people coming the same way, though, and postponing it would have been perceived as showing a lack of resolve, I think.  But I can definitely see if the roles were reversed and one of the people that I was going to be spending the next month with displayed symptoms of being a little bit outlandish from the outset, that I’d be more than a little bit worried.  I’ll have to make up for it by being extra-sound.

At some stage during the time I’ll be in the capital I also hope to pick up something from the juggling shop that I can learn in my spare time on the island.  Thinking something like poi (you know those balls on the ropes that street artists spin around their heads, usually whilst aflame – the balls that is, not the street artists), or devil sticks or possibly another diabolo, as I lost my last one, but I was getting pretty good at that before leaving it somewhere in France.  Not good enough to make a living street-performing, perhaps, but enough to be able to do some pretty nifty tricks, if I do say so.

After a month on Kefalonia turtle-monitoring, early in the morning of the first of July I’ll be back standing on the side of the road with my thumb out, making a start on my journey home.  I’m confident that I’ll be able hitchhike home in the two weeks I’ve given myself, although this has been met by scepticism by family and some friends.  But we’ll see.  I could probably do it in less time, but I’m planning on dropping in on various friends in Germany, Holland and Belgium each of which whom will be treated to an evening of my company.  If they can stick an entire evening.  I’ve also pencilled in a stop in Kosovo, for the simple reason that Google Maps wouldn’t allow me to plan my trip through there, they either want me to travel to the west of it, or to the east of it, through Bulgaria and all the way around Serbia, which has made me want to see Pristina.   Excluding Kosovo, though, Google Maps claims that the distance from Kefalonia to Ireland, via Corfu, Stuttgart, Kaiserslautern, Hamburg, Texel and Brussels (and possibly Paris, which I think I threw in for the craic) can be driven in just under two days.  Forty-six hours or something like that.  I don’t know if that’s non-stop driving, or if it includes rest stops, but I call that very doable in a two week time frame.  So long if I get picked up.  

If I’m still standing beside the road in Greece by the second week I’ll reconsider my options.

Saying Goodbye - Start Spreadin' the News

This'll only be a short one, which I realise is slightly anticlimactic (don't know what you were expecting), but I'm packing for the next adventure so it's the best I can do at the moment I'm afraid.  More to come.

When I decided to set up an event for leaving Facebook it was not intended as an attention seeking exercise - at least not consciously, but perhaps it has reflected some subconscious issues that I will need to deal with later - but I have enjoyed hearing from all of you, especially those of you that I hadn't had any contact with in ages, and it's been nice taking over a lot of your newsfeeds for the last few weeks, but I'm going to release them to you once again.

I'm going to leave the page open until midnight tonight because I've been getting a lot of last minute messages from people giving me alternate contact details - thanks to everyone that has been on to me so far, and to those that have said that they're attending this event, and thus possibly been plagued by notifications.  Not sure if the people who declined the invite did so to take their stand with Facebook, didn't really like me (not really entertaining that notion), or just didn't understand what the whole thing was about.

Not expecting a mass migration from Facebook as result of my leaving (although if I have inspired you to delete or suspend your account, please let me know) but if people start to think a bit about their use of Facebook and their privacy settings I don't think it will be in vain.

Hopefully see you guys in the real world.

As for me, I'm off to Greece tomorrow more on this in the next post.  Watch this space.

A Withdrawal from the Social Media Giant.

I really do not like tabloids.  I find their huge-headlines with 'clever' word-plays irritating in the extreme, and I find their stories are more geared towards creating scandal than informing people of actual facts.  Nor do I like their preoccupation with the lives of celebrities.  Updates about Uma Thurman's cellulite or 'Brangelina's' latest falling out do not interest me in the slightest, nor does the carry-on of any member of the Royal Family.  Pippa Middleton?  Don't care.  By the same reckoning, I have a particular loathing for media that focuses solely on celebs - Hello; National Enquirer; Nosey-Parker (the last one not being a publication that I'm aware of yet, but perhaps someday).

It dawned on me for the first time recently that one of the reasons that social media, particularly Facebook, makes me so uncomfortable is that it has become something of a living tabloid and gossip rag, giving me free and easy access into the lives of most of my friends, many of whom may only be acquaintances that I never would really talk to but who can now freely browse my information - that is, if they found me interesting enough to do so, which I would doubt, but then again any of them could also revel in reading about the cast of TOWIE or Eastenders, so who knows.

Of course Facebook has its advantages.  Being able to easily find people that you've lost touch with over the years: friends from school; the boy who lived next door to you before you moved house when you were six; that girl you thought was hot but never had the balls to talk to in person.  There's also the photo-tagging and sharing facilities, and then of course you can add a location and tell people exactly where you were when you were doing something, which is great free advertisement for the business that you're signing into as well as making it easy to remember for yourself and others.

All great.

However...

I'm not entirely sure what the actual figures are, but let's say for the sake of argument that one in ten people is a weirdo (I'm sure most will probably agree that the actual figure is much higher) and that one in even fifty or even a hundred is a complete psychopath or potentially violent stalker (again I suspect this is a very modest figure).  Now consider that there are 901 million active users on Facebook (Facebook Newsroom - Key Facts).  That's potentially 90.1 million oddballs and 9.01 million dangerous characters out there.

Now think about how many friends you have.  Just a random and not very scientific look to see how many Facebook friends people I know have has revealed something between one hundred and three hundred and fifty to be about average.  That's somewhere between ten and thirty-five loo-lahs and something like one to three mental cases that you're potentially friends with.  Now maybe you can say that you have carefully screened, and can vouch for, all three hundred of your friends, but I remain sceptical.

And so I'm deleting my FB account.  And I've made such a huge deal about it now that to come back to it at any stage would make me look like a right tosser, so I don't think I will.  Originally somebody told me that it wasn't possible to permanently delete one's account, and so I spent a long time deleting tags in photos and constructed an elaborate plan which entailed the creation of a new email account to use for Facebook, followed by setting the password of both my new email and my Facebook account to a twelve digit number that I would then destroy and thus be forever unable to access either the new email or my Facebook.  But then the other day someone with a brain told me that one can permanently delete their account, so that makes life a lot easier, but it will feel like less of a victory.

To be honest, though, none of the reasons listed above are my main grounds for leaving.  In truth I'm more sick of finding myself scrolling through my newsfeed, looking at semi-entertaining videos and photos and reading about what people had for lunch, instead of getting stuff done in the real world.  I also feel that I need to work on my social skills for meeting real people.  I'd much rather take my leave of a pack of 901 million anyway - one less weirdo to worry about for those of you remaining.

Evidently I don't have a problem with sharing what I'm doing or thinking, as I am still going to be continuing to throw it all out here.  It will still be drivel, and probably no more entertaining than a Facebook update, but it'll take more effort to write (which is good for me) and only the genuinely interested, incurably curious, or terminally bored will be reading what I have to say.   Particularly after this entry.