Facebook’s got a lot of problems. Facebook’s problems have problems. They’re nothing really that we haven’t known about for years, and mostly they’re fine if you’re not a moron, but I’m not going to sit here and say I’m not a moron. Not 100% of the time.
But their crappy new UI layout was what broke the camel’s back for me. See, told you I wasn’t not a moron 100% of the time. Seems like a pretty frivolous reason, right?
To be honest, the biggest pain of deleting my Facebook account is losing Messenger. There are a few people and groups I want to stay in touch with and I don’t know if they’ll be able to find me anywhere else.
But look, WordPress’s new UI lets me put a WhatsApp button!
I want to keep in touch with my friends both foreign and domestic, but to be brutally honest they should all know where to find me by now if they want to. I’m here on WordPress, I’m on Twitter, I’m on Gmail, Signal, Amazon, Goodreads, Fandom, LinkedIn, Usenet. You can google me. I have a phone.
I’ll be curious to see what new social media appears on the horizon. There will always be something. And I’m not going anywhere. With any luck, this will leave me with fewer distractions. Fewer things making me pointlessly unhappy.
Let’s see.
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About Hatboy
I’m not often driven to introspection or reflection, but the question does come up sometimes. The big question. So big, there’s just no containing it within the puny boundaries of a single set of punctuationary bookends.
Who are these mysterious and unsung heroes of obscurity and shadow? What is their origin story? Do they have a prequel trilogy? What are their secret identities? What are their public identities, for that matter? What are their powers? Their abilities? Their haunted pasts and troubled futures? Their modus operandi? Where do they live anyway, and when? What do they do for a living? Do they really have these fantastical adventures, or is it a dazzlingly intellectual and overwrought metaphor? Or is it perhaps a smug and post-modern sort of metaphor? Is it a plain stupid metaphor, hedged around with thick wads of plausible deniability, a soap bubble of illusory plot dependent upon readers who don’t dare question it for fear of looking foolish? A flight of fancy, having dozed off in front of the television during an episode of something suitably spaceship-oriented? Do they have a quest, a handler, a mission statement, a department-level development objective in five stages?
I am Hatboy.
https://hatboy.blog/2013/12/17/metalude-who-are-creepy-and-hatboy/
Hatboy's Hatstand 
I wonder how long it’ll take for FB to revert to the old interface, or at least to allow for different UI options, which is what they ultimately should have done.
It’s nice to see multiple coders working hard to develop workarounds. I feel there’s a metaphor here, or at least a story.
“Don’t like the way Fallout 4 came out? Wait for mod-makers to fix the god-awful conversation interface!”
“Skyrim’s interface suck for you too? Sky UI is here to save the day! If only Bethesda had considered the interface from the start!”
“Microsoft! …Microsoft.”
I’m sorry for your Facebook-loss. We’ve discussed it before and I know you got value out of it, so I empathize.
It’s kind of sad, but mostly an inconvenience. There are so many people to keep track of. And I do talk with a lot of them regularly. But it’s beginning to dawn on me that that’s also a huge mental load.
I’m hoping I can downsize, while still watching out for some of my peeps who need it the most.
What’s been funny is how many people have asked if I’m okay, like walking away from a global Skinner box is sign of some kind of mental illness. And I’m not saying it isn’t – I’m not going to deny I’ve been troubled lately, and I’m not going to turn around and start shouting about the evils of Facebook now that I’ve personally decided to leave. There’s no new information here. It’s always been bad. This decision is on me. Mostly it means people care, and that’s nice.
Perhaps the saddest and strangest element of it, though, is Morgoth’s Curse. As you might recall (I blogged about it at the time), he was an old Usenet colleague and friend of mine. I never met him, but he was good people. He died a few years ago, but his family kept his Facebook account – not active, but not deleted. So his comments still pop up on my “on this day” and assorted posts. Kind of like he’s still around.
He probably has other Facebook friends. He’s not going to be gone forever if I delete my account. His posts still exist on Usenet. But another part of him, a very personal part, will be gone for me. Forever. And that’s sad.
It IS sad Jesus Christ man, can you not do that to me? I didn’t even know the guy and now I’m sad.
Hopefully entertaining follow-up (because why wouldn’t I document this? I document things, it’s what I am), I had to install Firefox just so I could access the Settings page that includes the account deactivation / deletion option. Chrome wouldn’t even open it, just sent me to a page with a sad face on it.
So now I am making a backup archive (HTML) of all my posts, comments, uploads, all my data. I guess that will go on a backup hard drive here, so the nice news is, just like the Usenet archive, Morgoth’s stuff will still exist in some form.
Also, he was immortalised in Arsebook anyway, so there’s always that.
Once my backup is made, I’ll be ready to toss the match.
For the morbidly curious, here’s what it looks like. Not as difficult (so far) as I had heard it was, but I made my backup (2 GB of random bullshit and photos) and set the wheels in motion. Apparently now I have a month to sweat it out and stop myself from caving and going crawling back. Let’s see!
I’m morbidly curious.
I’m on the edge of my seat! Will he cave, or will he hold strong! Will I care, if Trump is reelected?
My struggle with Facebook addiction is a microcosm of USian society. Somehow. Work in progress.
I’ve drifted over from work windows and opened my Chrome browser at least six times today before going “right … I’m not actually opening this browser window for anything am I.”
Sounds like drinking game material right there….
That has a catastrophic impact on my work, but makes me very popular in meetings.
According to our economic analysts who may or may not know what the fuck they are talking about, I couldn’t say whether they do or not, it is the Mexican peso you need to watch as the Trump re-election indicator. Predicted 2016. It’s holding good so far…I’m watching it with interest just in case they are right.
I am willing to back Hatboy and make a bet Hatboy will not cave. Anyone willing to bet against me and loses has to eat a vegemite sandwich. If Hatboy fucks me over and is piss weak and can’t live without Zuckerberg in his life for 30 days, I’ll eat… I was going to say some of Damon’s horrific orange cheese but I don’t think I can get it here. I know, some of that marshmallow fluff shit on the American shelf at my local supermarket. I’m dicing with death because anything with preservatives gives me a migraine and that marshmallow might hospitalise me so Hatboy better not cave…
Point of order, I am still on WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook, but that’s just a communication necessity and is linked to my phone number, not a Facebook account. Which is, as of my set of posts this morning, deleted [1]and removed from my PC and phone, along with Messenger.
[1] With the option to restart for the next 30 days. Which is what we’re counting down here. Obviously.
Also, just to tie my Facebook situation and the US presidential election together in a neat little package, the archived data from my Facebook account revealed that this was the first comment I ever made on Facebook, on the Facebook incarnation of the alt.fan.robert-jordan newsgroup, in 2008:
Post was also made two years before I had my colon removed, for added hilarity points. Here’s to the US not tampon-disembowelling the world to death in November.
No, I don’t know how 2008 Hatboy thought a tampon string would catch in a woman’s colon. But keep in mind this is a metaphorical woman who is in fact the United States of America, so she could find a way.
Wow, 2008. The year Obama won, and you were already that dark. But yet, so naive about how low we could go. Those were simpler, more innocent times.
To be fair, it was October 2008 so he hadn’t won yet? And we were staggering away from eight years of W, beshitted to the knees with US foreign policy.
Obama didn’t exactly make any of that better, plus he invited the backlash (as so excellently summarised by Cody’s Showdy this week), but he was something.
True.
This blew me away, I have to share it. LMAO
Bwaaahahahaha
BUT HOW WILL I SHARE MY PROGRESS OF MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF WAR WITH YOU?
OH SHIT LET ME REINSTALL THAT BAD BOY
It’s only 96 gigs! A tiny Assassin’s Creed knock-off!
It’s-Only-96-Gigs-A-Tiny-Assassin’s-Creed-Knock-Off, title of your sex tape.
I thought that was going to be called ‘Booty of the Galaxy’.
(Also it’s hardly an rpg, and more like an action game with awful EA-like loot purchase features. But at least the horizon is pretty!)