I liken social media to a dance hall. You can have all the best accommodations, hire the toniest bands, and juice the place up with strobe lights and special effects...but it's still no fun if no one shows up.
That was the problem with Google+. It had everything going for it, but there wasn't any reason (at the time) for anyone to show up. It was an empty gymnasium, with a few wallflowers standing on the sidelines, no one to dance with.
Facebook, on the other hand, is more like an inner-city street festival gone astray. We keep going back, because everyone's there right? But when we get there we find we're packed shoulder-to-shoulder, the drinks are overpriced and watered down, and you can barely even hear the band because of all the crying babies and obnoxious drunks. Meanwhile, someone's always getting mugged or raped, and your best friend got ejected after Security caught him smoking weed in the Porta-Potty. In short, Facebook has become a bummer, a buzzkill, and it's just not fun any more.
Not only that, but the company itself has become abusive. Drunk with their own power, and infused with hubris, they've become Too Big To Fail--at least in their own eyes. Their early success created a monetization problem which they've apparently solved at the expense of the users who made the site popular to begin with. In other words, we've been used, folks.
Worst of all, they're collaborators. They've become so embedded with the state establishment that they're essentially becoming the social media wing of the government. Their propensity to control the narrative and monitor dissent should be disturbing to any freethinking individual.
They've morphed into North Korea, with Kim Dong Zuck as Dear Leader.
Everyone knows this. I'm not saying anything surprising here. But people keep going back, even after being banned and deleted and harrassed relentlessly. Why? Two reasons: 1) Nobody wants to dance by themselves, and 2) All the action is on Facebook.
The first reason is a large part of why I've become a MeWe evangelist of late. It's not like they're paying me, I just want a place to get my social on without being abused. A place that will woo me but not rape me. MeWe seems like a good place to dance, I just need some partners so I'm not doing a Billy Idol.
But I get it: all the action is on Facebook. It's like AC/DC's Hell: "all our friends are there". But think about that for a minute: how many of those friends do you actually interact with on a regular basis? How big is your monkeysphere? What's your Dunbar Number for social media? Do you REALLY get to see everything all the really important people post, or they you? I doubt it. You can still pare down your friends list or join a small group, but understand that Facebook DOES NOT APPROVE, and will do everything they can to engineer you back into the commercially approved slipstream. They control the algorithm, which means they control the conversations.
It's also enlightening to understand the insidious methods Facebook uses to keep people addicted. Nir Eyar, author of "Hooked", has spelled out the steps of what he calls "Behavioral Design", a method to create products that use subtle psychological manipulation techniques to get us engaged and KEEP us there. Facebook was one of his principle models. They literally have us "hooked".
Well, I know a thing or two about behavior myself (my car tag says OPERANT1), and I tend to resent being used. There are ways to counter environmental conditioning, and they're not really difficult, if you're motivated to do so.
So, if you too are tired of Facebook's creeping totalitarianism and interested in finding a better place to hang, consider these six steps I'm taking to Get The Facebook Monkey Off My Back (how's that for a Planter's Mix of metaphors?)
Set up your account on MeWe, fill in the details and post a Hello post. Look for all your friends who are already there, and send them invitations.
Turn on all your MeWe notifications, and plan to check it anyway twice a day for postings, and to post something. The well ain't gonna prime itself; action creates momentum.
Next, go back to Facebook and post "Follow Me To MeWe" followed by your MeWe handle. Then invite 10 of your best friends, and tell them to invite ten of their best friends. Behold the power of exponentiation. Put the multiplier effect to work.
Now, TURN OFF all your Facebook external notifications. Yep, you heard me. The mobile app with the little "23" on top....delete it or hide it. The emails telling you that your mother-in-law "liked" your latest Pepe meme....unsubscribe. Stop that shit cold. Instead, start checking Facebook twice a day, and even then check ONLY YOUR NOTIFICATIONS. Forgodsake don't scroll randomly, what the hell good is THAT? Just check and answer your actual friend engagements. The rest is just static.
Start posting all of your minor conversational things on MeWe ONLY. I'm talking about FEE articles you liked or news stories you want to comment on or funny ass memes. Stop putting that stuff on Facebook so that 4900 of your 5000 friends who won't see it, won't see it. Put it where the friends who matter and will see it anyway will see it anyway: MeWe.
Delete Facebook Messenger. It's CANCER. Use MeWe as your new chat platform. Think of it as Telegram with a social media page attached. Better privacy than Whats App, which is owned by Fascistbook after all. Anything's better than Facebook Messenger!
After a couple of weeks, start preparing yourself to ditch Facebook. Download all of your uploaded data (FB lets you do this--just go to your Settings and find the link. They will let you download a zip file. Warning: it took me 3 hours to download mine). Start deleting your personal information (phone numbers, emails, etc) as much as possible, because from what I hear Facebook becomes a stalker after you leave. Disengage from as many groups as possible. Pretend as if they are about to delete your account. Because these days who knows they actually might. WE ALL KNOW SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN ZUCC'D. But more importantly, it makes staying on Facebook less important. This gives us more freedom to act without worry of repercussion. When you're ready to leave completely, delete your mobile apps and remove the link from your browser. Then decide whether you want to Abandon or Deactivate. I chose to Abandon, because that worked just fine for Myspace and Deactivating doesn't really accomplish a whole helluva lot anyway (Facebook will have the information you've entered so far forever and ever, amen). Also, those who want to keep their business pages active can't deactivate without losing them. This is one reason I Abandoned rather than Deactivated; nevertheless, I will most likely Deactivate eventually.
You've now successfully eliminated 90% of the garbage out of your life and replaced it with a good solid 10% of high-quality social interaction. Now, there are a couple more reasons why you might want to keep that FB account for awhile: If you have a business page you want to maintain, or If you are a content creator of some sort. I'll address those separately.
The business page part is easy--Facebook has a Pages App that you can download and check on, post to, and respond to messages on all your business pages without ever having to see any information from your home page. This is FANTASTIC! Now I can deal with my social media business contacts without ever having to smell the sewerage emanating from Facebook proper. End of story.
Now, if you're a content creator--whether it's Steemit articles or YouTube videos or a blog or podcasts or memes--you're probably going to want to post them or links to them where the greatest number of people will see them. I get that. But remember the whole point of that is not to engage in social networking per se but to engage and connect and drive people to your content, a place where they can engage with you away from Facebook's totalitarian watchful gaze. Luckily, there's a way around that too. Create a Twitter account. Go to Settings-->Apps-->Facebook Connect, and choose "Post to my Facebook Profile". You're done. Now everything you post on Twitter automatically goes to your Facebook page, where those same 4900 friends who never saw your stuff before can continue not seeing it. You won't be able to see how many people "Liked" it, and you won't be able to read any of the nasty comments, but that's a GOOD THING. The only thing that really counts is clicks and engagement--the rest is just meaningless distraction.
So that's it. That's how I intend to make Facebook insignificant in my life without giving up anything good about social media. I hope everyone follows suit, and follows me to MeWe. Leaving Facebook doesn't have to mean leaving my Facebook friends. We're just moving the party to a better location. Come with, let's dance!