Saturday 15 August 2009

My love and seething hatred relationship with facebook when trying to close my account...

SO. It has taken me all day to try to close down Facebook.

The people behind it make it almost impossible to delete your information. When trying to find out how I could delete my Wall information (posts, status updates, photo upload info etc) I found that Facebook offers no facility to delete the Wall. Therefore, you have to delete each tiny update individually. I had two and a half years' worth of actions on my Wall. This has taken me hours. There is no point in just taking the easy option and using the "disable Wall" option, as then there would be absolutely no reason for closing the account. The info would still be in tact, sitting on their systems.

Not only this, Facebook seems crafty. Every time it says I have no more wall posts left, it has actually kept a stash of them hidden that it hasn't enabled me to delete. This has happened at least ten times when I have logged back in to see IF, this time, my Wall is empty. A glitch in the system or just Facebook being utter arseholes and wanting to keep information?....I don't know.

Having said all this, closing down Facebook has not been an easy thing to do - emotionally, that is. I have spent the day looking through a log of my past two and a half years. It is like an online diary....reading through it, I was reminded of so many past times that I had forgotten about. I read a post from Em, saying that she missed me "more than words can say" when I was travelling around Asia. There were so many other memories that I wiped....posts of friends asking me whereabouts I was in Thailand because they wanted to meet up with me; of Tom telling me that 2009 "will be the best year yet. Last year was amazing, but this year will be even better"; of me and Ali on our travel adventure, living the dream (and wanting to kill each other, but still living OUR dream); of drunken nights in Brighton and barbeques down the beach; of me and Laurence keeping track of our score in our pool competition (though I am still not sure who actually won); of my friend Paul informing me that India is full of "yoghurt weavers"; of old friendships that have now faded away, like that of mine and Ali's American friend Joe, who informed me on my Wall that he was going to write me a list of reasons why I am an "instigator". And then I was reminded of the old features on Facebook years ago - The Graffiti we used to do, the gifts we used to give each other. (Richie Gladman: "Thanks for my pencil, Butler." Em: "Here's a cat in a bag. I don't know why. Facebook is weird.")

So giving up Facebook hasn't been a breeze like I thought it would be. It has actually brought tears to my eyes - nothing has been able to log my friendships better than that website. And I know that I will lose a lot of friendships from closing my account because they won't stand the new "virtual" distance.

But it is the right thing to do. It would be hypocritical of me to support fat cat neo-conservative free trade bastards. And then there is the fact that companies that I HATE have bought into being able to get the public's information for their own gain, whilst wrecking the world for those less fortunate than ourselves. (Though she says this whilst writing on a blogging site owned by Google....hmmmmmmm.)

I was going to delete my Myspace too, but that really WOULD be the end of an era, and I can't bring myself to do it yet....I may break down in tears! The time will come. Just not yet.