A few weeks ago I had posted about the reduction of advertising and marketing in my daily life, and the changes I was going to make to shrug off some of the noise modern living has placed upon my shoulders. I have started to shrug.

At first I thought this was going to be a hard process and in the process itself I have found it to be quite easy, as this has allowed me to rediscover some facets I feel I have been missing and neglected for far too long.

The first major change has come in the way I communicate. In the past text messages and seeing friends in person were the norm, before the cell phone instant messenger and again seeing people in the flesh were the norm. To use a over used phrase life got busy, people move away and relationships evolve, as over used as that phrase is there are some truths to it. Girlfriends and boyfriends come and go, friends move to other states for school, family and work and life moves on. People come and visit but dynamics between friends and loved ones changes with experience and time, you change as well. For the worse I feel Facebook has impacted the way I communicate with friends, family and others around the world, it has made me lazy and distracted and in the end can only harm my relationships further.

So I have taken it upon myself to close my Facebook account for good, not just to deactivate or hide it, but to fully remove the account I have had since late 2005. I have not only made this decision based on relationships, but on several other factors I will list out. First and foremost the advertisement on Facebook, you cant remove it and there is no pay version of Facebook for the simple matter that YOU are the product, and not the site itself. The functionality is obtrusive as of late; as I am not sure how Facebook changed their algorithms but the truth of the matter is Facebook hides information that i should have known about three days ago thinking I would like to see it today. Why? The company politics are horrid, the company history, privacy issues and general attitude is absurd.

Remember that IPO?

Yeah, my point exactly.

That event really shows you how most people, and even some investors just didn’t have faith the business, yes you can make a shit ton of money, but does is have weight to travel the distance?

One other factor into my removal from the system is the recent rash of companies asking for Facebook credentials of current and potential employees, as my first reaction would be “where is the warrant?” One additional factor is personal security, one less account to get compromised.

In the near future I will add more to this. You can add this under minimalism if you wish, as I am trying to un-clutter the crap from my life to make things like moving easier in the future and to just make life more organised and efficient in daily living. This is just the start.