A year without Facebook

A year ago I deleted my Facebook account. It wasn’t quite a rash decision, but after deciding I was going to do it I acted on that almost immediately. I won’t lie, at first it was hard to give up, put simply, I was addicted to it, although I got nothing really from that addiction.

So, I did delete the account, and lost contact with most of the 130 or so friends I had there. Truth is that was the only contact we had, either as former work colleagues from my days on the survey boats or from when I was arranging the school reunion. So, for the most of them I rationalised that all we had in common was our past, and we cannot spend too much time in looking back, regretting of what we may or may not have done.



We must look forward to the future: for me that is when I meet some of my online friends, either my long time friend from Colorado who should be in Sussex next month or Tony, the former Olympic cyclist who wants to cycle round the Outer Hebrides. Thinking of all the distilleries there, I am liking the idea more and more, Tony, but that would leave less time for the cycling……

Today it has been announced that the NSA and GCHQ probably have been eavesdropping in on our e mails: now, I don’t know if you’re like me, but I write maybe half a dozen mails a year and is all full of whinging about work, getting old or some such stuff. But that should not warn us the dangers of unrestricted snooping. I mention this now as Facebook collects lots of data on its users, and at some point may be compelled to hand it over to authorities to see what things we ‘like’. It just won’t be Facebook, but other social sites. We already are seeing people arrested for what they say on Twitter, is this part of the thought police? Just a thought.

I am careful about what I post online as there are just two people with my name in the world, and so if you type my name or screen names, odds are it will be me. I do occasionally Google my name and I see that Rum I reviewed when I was drunk or the bad CD reviews I did on Amazon back in the day. The internet never forgets.