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.