Thursday, May 13, 2010

Coping Without Facebook: An Update

Not too long ago, I came up with the ridiculous (and some say heretical) decision of suspending my Facebook account indefinitely.
Most of my friends reacted the way I'd expected. Let's see, there was surprise, there was total and utter disbelief, and I swear to God I think there was some little bit of sadness. They just couldn't believe someone could let something as "important" as Facebook go just like that.

Yes, I do not deny that Facebook is a great tool for catching up with friends, finding long lost friends, or simply just chilling out (by playing some silly games). In fact, I'll probably reactivate my Facebook account when I go to Melbourne, just so I can communicate with everyone more easily.

Anyways, this is supposed to be an update on how I've been faring in these 11 days since leaving Facebook. And an update it shall be.

Many a people predicted SEFAWAS or Severe Facebook Withdrawal Syndrome (trust me, I love coming up with useless acronyms ;P ) To be honest I did too, but the transition period turned out to be pretty mild. There were times when my mouse pointer would automatically move towards the Facebook tab, but I'd always stop myself from doing any further damage.

As the days wore on, it became more and more natural [living without Facebook]. No longer would I unwittingly move my mouse towards the Facebook tab. I found other things to do. (One of them being being obsessed with defragmenting my computers' hard drives every other day to ensure the shortest boot time, crazy I know.)

As it turned out to be, my social life didn't go down the drain. In fact some of this year's funnest things happened during the period I threw Facebook away. Like I've said before, those that want to reach me will find a way to reach me, so I'm in no way disconnected from the world.

So why not guys, give it a try! Test your own resilience and self control and see how long you can survive without Facebook. ;P


4 comments:

KLK1989 said...

You don't need to reactivate your Facebook account. Since you already proofed that you can live without Facebook, why the hassle to reactivate it and reconnect back with your friends again? You got MSN to communicate with your beloved friends. Reactivate means you had failed to proof that you can really live without existence of Facebook.

Xiang Ning said...

Yes I have already proven that I can live perfectly fine without Facebook. That is not to say I WANT to live without Facebook.

Like I said I do not deny the advantages of having a Facebook account, and that I'd probably reactivate it when I get to Melbourne.

Wayne said...

If I were to try this myself, the time normally wasted on Facebook would just go into other forms of social networking e.g. blogging. :P

Xiang Ning said...

Uh huh..I'm beginning to realise that I'm not utilizing my "saved" wasted time properly :P