I love my social networks.

The virtual contact they provide augments the energy I gain from human contact.

My virtual connections are wide and deep. Much more diverse than my already fairly diverse physical networks. And I highly-value both.

Via my social networks I frequently:

• Learn new things from articles my connections post
• Catch-up on news and views of old school friends I’ve not seen in decades
• Observe healthy debates (and sometimes arguments) between people who are much more civil in real life (RL)
• Organise RL social events
• Understand friends and family members’ interests and feelings
• LOL, ROTFL and even CMV
• Discover reasons or topics to (re-)connect in RL
• Enjoy the laughs my network provides me, daily
• Poke (hopefully safe) fun at myself, my connections and/or society through my attempts at humour
• Blend my RL engagement to create a richer ‘hybrid life’ relationship
• Remind myself and others of events from the past
• Share photographs that allow my friends and family to enjoy moments present and past
• Let my connections know what I’m up to, and discover what they’re up to
• Kill time (what a sad term that is) with the infinite scroll while waiting in physical queues and when (often) procrastinating

It is a virtual playground for the neotenic me.

The idea of losing all this for a year (and maybe even forever) is terrible.

But the idea of being someone else’s product is worse.

And worse than being someone else’s product, is being someone else’s product that is manipulated while travelling down a production line that is turning me into a monitised commodity.

I’m not an ill-informed victim – I work in IT after all. And up until now, I’ve been willing to trade my ‘value to Facebook’ for the value I get in exchange (that’s my highly-valued bullet list above).

But my willingness to trade has ended. I’ve decided, today, that I’m weaning myself off Facebook over the next 74 days, and that, from 1 January 2021, I’ll be a “deFacee”.

That’s my term for someone who has decided to exit Facebook. It’s time for deprogramming, detoxification, desisting, depolarisation, decolonisation, deactivation and delivery of a one-person message: #IamnotyourproductFacebook

“No longer mourn for me when I am dead I’m a deFacee

than you shall hear the surly sullen my last notification bell

give warning to the world that I am fled free

from this vile virtual world with vilest worms to dwell.”

William Shakespeare (modified for 2020)