Yes, I'm sure

This isn't the first time I've left Facebook. A few years ago I looked at my friend count and it hit me: I don't have 188 friends. The account was gone shortly after.

The absurdity of my friend count (251) wasn't a factor in my decision this time around until after I had hit the deactivate button—which is hidden waaaaaay at the bottom of your privacy settings, if I remember correctly.

Two or three years after my first quit, the people at Facebook have ramped up their methods of talking you off of their virtual ledge.

Tactic A is what I'm calling the "Think about what you're giving up" method.



A guy in a trenchcoat and fedora (not in a pervy flasher kind of way) hedges out onto the ledge with you, trying not to look down. He looks a lot like Mark Zuckerberg, in my mind.

"Hey pal, everything OK?" he asks me.

"Yeah, don't worry about me," I tell him.

"I don't know if it is," he says quickly. "You probably clicked on the wrong button, because you're about to deactivate your Facebook account."

"Yeah," I tell him. "I know what I clicked on."

"Well, why would you want to do that?" he asks. "Can you imagine what your life will be like without Facebook?"

"I imagine I'll sleep better," I say. "Less annoyances overall."

The trenchcoated saviour's jaw juts out a little and he looks away from me. He sees my determination.

"What about your—his voice changes to a blank, robotic one: 251—friends? Have you thought about them at all? Chris will miss you. Margaret will miss you. Greg will miss you. Melissa will miss you. Leah will miss you."

Unfazed, I loosen my grip on the ledge. I'm ready to take the plunge.

"Well wait a minute," he says to me. Tactic B: "Tell me why you're deactivating."

A last-ditch roadblock. I throw the first thing I can think of at him and he has an answer for it. He has an answer for everything.


With my focus on deactivation only growing, the man is getting worried.

"Well tell me in your own words what you're feeling. How do you feel?"

"I'm tired of it," I say to him. "Too much frivolous, stupid, annoying garbage to sift through every day, just so I can see how one of the handful of people I actually care about on this thing are doing. And in most instances, I already know how those people are doing because you know, I'm actually friends with them. We call each other, we e-mail. How has it gotten to the point that e-mailing is the more personal option?"

"Facebook has emai----"

"I know. I don't care. It was a rhetorical question."

I close my eyes and take the e-plunge. There's no water to hit, no light to go towards (though Evan Williams might tell you otherwise). There's nothing. Except...wait...dammit.

Tactic C: Purgatory, in the form of needlessly long and almost undecipherable words.

Now, finally, nothing. White room. Greener pastures. Enough.

You're probably thinking that it's a matter of time before I'm back. I won't entirely disagree with you. I think I would have stayed away the last time had my sister not had her first child shortly after I quit. She's pregnant again (same father, she's classy—and married—like that) and due in September. If I do come back though, I'll have learned an important lesson. An anonymous name, unsearchable and no more than 20 or 25 friends, who were the reason I was excited about Facebook when I first signed up for it in 2005.