[doktorhladnjak]

There are a lot of people on this thread complaining about the privacy implications of Facebook and how Mark Zuckerberg is evil. While I don't disagree with those sentiments, it's not really why I avoid Facebook. I still use a lot of things that have similar problems like Google or Reddit.

One of the most sinister things about Facebook to me is that it creates the illusion that you are close with friends or relatives when you're really mostly watching a superficial view of peoples' lives in a passive, voyeuristic way. Comments and likes make you feel connected, but they are not meaningful interaction.

When I first deleted my account and stopped using Facebook, I felt initially a lot lonelier. But was I? After more time went by, I became convinced it was all too superficial.

Interestingly, who I spent time with shifted toward other people who were either not on Facebook at all or were very unengaged with it personally (for example, one friend only uses it to promote his business).

My only partial regret with any of this is that the pandemic really scrambled this. Almost all of my friends were purely people I saw in person, with no online component to our friendship. That all got paused in 2020, and has been very hard to get back to the same level since.