Booking out for more face time

Ifinished 2017 by doing a wild thing. Well, actually I finished 2017 asleep on the couch missing the end of a movie, but before that I did a wild thing: I closed my Facebook account.

Well, actually I didn’t quite close my Facebook account – that’s nigh impossible – but I deactivated it; I let the air go dead.

It was tough, but not for the reasons you would think.

Facebook and I used to be good together. I threw sheep at people, invited my family, and reconnected with folk I hadn’t seen since primary school.

We played nicely together, Facebook and I; we played for hours. Like friends that are around for a summer season, Facebook was central to my life.

But gradually it stopped being fun. It ate up hours that I wanted for other things. It was greedy for my time. It nagged me about birthdays, it heaved with unread messages, it suggested wedding dresses, diets, and fertility treatment, and I resented it.

We grew apart, and eventually we stopped talking.

I haven’t used Facebook for over a year now.

I don’t have the App, I never used Messenger, and I don’t care about everyone I ever shared space with feeling “hashtag blessed” or going to gym or bemoaning the government – and I never need to see another photo of a glossy family posing in blue denims and white shirts.

Still, leaving was like climbing out of a web, and even now I’m not properly extricated.

They ask several “searching” questions when you try to go – though first you have to find the deactivate option hidden behind a gazillion other options – and then they remind you that any accounts you have linked to Facebook won’t work anymore, and that if you do use things that were ever attached to Facebook then your account will automatically reactivate, like Frankenstein in a thunderstorm – and then you get to leave. Sort of. But not before they say “hey, don’t forget Messenger – you can’t use Messenger if you deactivate,” and then, only then, they tell you that if you ever want to reactivate your account again, all you need to do is sign in.

“Deactivate,” it turns out, is the methadone of social media addicts.

It’s easy to do. And undo. And redo. And undo.

When you’re drunk, when you’re stalking an ex, whenever ...