[Afal]

Oh boy another internet "experiment" when someone gives up $technology and ends up saying absolutely nothing in their post. I sure do love reading these pretentious pieces of "intellectual" prose.

In fact I shall start an "experiment" myself to see if replacing every instance of "experiment" in these kind of articles with "controversial decision" to see if they read better. I mean it's as if people use the word "experiment" to justify being avant-garde.

Except in this case it's not even a controversial thing. People are leaving facebook for tonnes of reasons (fad has died, not finding its uses any more, don't want to be tied with a system that hoards personal data and sells them off to companies etc). Leaving Facebook isn't an edgy thing to do; not before and not now. Anyone I knew that announced that they're "leaving facebook" end up being rather smugly obnoxious when tech news headlines say "facebook did some things that people don't like. boooo facebook!" saying they "knew all along" and they were obviously smarter and more superior than the regular "tech weenie" still on their facebook.

We all know what the result of this "experiment" is going to be. "My life was significantly improved thanks to not using facebook. Just as I thought! Aren't I clever?". There's no point denying it because that's what they're going to say. Just like I said I'll replace "experiment" with "controversial decision". I already know that I'm going to say "Nope. The posts were not better at all. Told ya!" because I know that when it's something I dislike in the first place I'm going to have a visceral reaction to hate it rather than say doing an ACTUAL experiment which doesn't have this cognitive bias.

And I'm right, am I? I mean I'm not WRONG or something? Please someone validate my beliefs which I portray on the internet. I desperately need this!!!

[basicallydan]

Maybe that's how it came off, but if we look past the "look at me and my controversial decision masquerading as an experiment!" layer, and focus on his reasoning behind the decision: can you relate at all? I can.

"Yeah, I saw your post on Facebook" is one of the phrases I've found myself and my friends saying over the past couple of years, and sometimes I don't like hearing it, even from my own mouth.

Nevertheless, announcing it publicly as an "experiment" - it's debatable whether this has any value or point.

[unimpressive]

> And I'm right, am I? I mean I'm not WRONG or something? Please someone validate my beliefs which I portray on the internet. I desperately need this!!!

I think that was supposed to be ironic. I think. Regardless, that's how it came off to me too. I still have no Facebook account, and I'm not getting one. If you're unhappy just leave, no need to make a big fuss out of it.

[sirrealle]

I deleted my Facebook account about 2 years ago. Want to know how it has changed my life? Well, it really hasn't. Sometimes I don't hear about parties / events, but it's usually just an event that I'd either hear about anyway, or would be uninteresting to me in some way. Other than that, no life-changing epiphanies, no extra productivity, no increased level of smugness. Absolutely nothing has changed, and nobody cares. The author of the article may be concerned, thinking their life will change drastically or they will drop off the face of the earth and have to claw their way back to the top of their perceived social food chain, but they'll learn over time that their presence on facebook also does not matter, and they'll have to find another way to tell the world about their thoughts, and hope that people will sign up for an RSS feed to know when they've made new blog posts.

[gonehome]

Another week another post about someone leaving facebook.

There is nothing interesting or novel in these posts. All that happens is that the people who have also left facebook find validation in seeing someone else do it so they up vote their story to the front page.

I don't know if it's about individuality or some perceived minority of 'non-facebook' users wanting to band together, but the fact that someone has left facebook is uninteresting.

In addition to this it's made worse by the articles acting as if it's some crowning achievement when all they're doing is limiting their methods of interacting with other people.