Delete your profile, or perish trying

There is no shortage of reasons to hate Facebook.

The time sink, the obsession; the passive-aggressive atmosphere; the lazy cowardice disguised as social communication; the freedom and complete ease to stalk and be stalked; the way every Facebook user is targeted, and their information sold and used to keep the depraved cycle working.

Facebook is like high school never ended. People whine and vent and flirt in the most fake, disingenuous way possible. The ugly insecurities and weaknesses of humanity take their only form of connection.

This is best demonstrated in the maddeningly deluded concept of the “status update.” What does it mean to soliloquize to the Internet as if no one is watching, but everyone is?

Facebook has become the basest form for interaction. Social risk is required for any action made that might result in a negative outcome: starting conversation with something you fear rejection, asking someone out on a date, going in for the kiss, breaking it off, etc.

Our lives, as naturally insecure social animals, are filled with social risk, mediated by our wealth of modes of communication. First, new methods were designed and marketed for the ease of convenience. Now, with so many methods to choose from, people naturally float to methods of the most ease and least risk — texting, instant messaging or Facebook.

A text or instant message has no pressure of personal interaction (at least most of the time). But if there’s something you want to know about, or find out from someone with Facebook, your options are nearly limitless — and all socially risk free.

Rather than call a person on the phone (which even requires asking for a number — yet another mortifying action that elicits risk), why not just sort through their Facebook activities? Read their posts and status updates and those of their friends, their names and faces conveniently labeled and underlined.

Perhaps most importantly, Facebook has made no denial that it sell users’ information. The counterargument often cites the practices of telemarketers and credit card junk mail.

Whether Facebook is not the only, or even the first, company to take part in this does not excuse it or make it right in the slightest degree.

We all unfortunately live enveloped in and inseparably from modern Western civilization, addicted to oil, money, ourselves, communication, technology and, now, Facebook.

But it doesn’t have to be like that for everything.
I implore you. Delete your Facebook. Don’t just deactivate it.
Delete it. Permanently.