After years of threatening my digital self with drunken tirades, and passionate sermons against inherently anti-social behaviors, I've finally done it - I killed my Facebook Profile. Read on to see why I made the decision, how I did it, and the aftermath of my public display of digital murder.
Here's the questionnaire I prepared to help me make this decision to euthanize my primary social media platform:
Why do I want a Facebook profile?
THEN: I want to reach out to old friends, classmates, etc... in the easiest way possible. Oh, and check-up on all of my ex-girlfriends and former crushes. Also, I hear you can make money with Facebook. That would be cool.
NOW: I don't want to reach out to old friends the easiest way possible. I want to hang out with them and make some memories the old-fashioned way. And I hate myself for my ridiculously anti-social, creepy leanings towards digital stalkery
Why do I need a Facebook account?
THEN: Some of my friends insist that Facebook is the only way to get in contact with them. That, and I have over a dozen Facebook Business Pages that I manage for clients that are linked to my profile.
NOW: Any friend insisting on Facebook is likely just avoiding a face-to-face smackdown for not showing up to my birthday party. And last I checked, all of my friends have cellphones and email addresses. Oh, and Seth is managing our clients' business pages.
What kind of "social" do I really want?
THEN: I love conversation of all kinds. Having lots of friends, in-person and digitally, makes me feel cool, and connected and popular.
NOW: I prefer in-person conversations on a dirty porch with a cold beer. And anyone not willing to participate in an epic porch hang with me is not a real friend.
What kind of "social" do I really need?
THEN: I need to make myself available to all types to help them solve problems of the marketing or business variety.
NOW: High quality relationships, with a small amount of people. My relatively small group of real friends (maybe 20 total) have earned my time, not flicking a like button on a posted photo to show them how much I care.
What's the worse that could happen if I delete my Facebook account?
THEN: My clients may get pissed. I'll lose money. I'll lose friends. I'll lose social status (remember Klout?).
NOW: My clients may be pissed. I might lose money. I might lose friends. I'll certainly lose social status. But I can replace the time spent maintaining a hundreds of diluted relationships, with forging relationships with like minded people - new clients, and new friends. Better clients. Better friends.
"Show, don't tell ... Characters are not what they say, they are what they do." - John Jacobsen, Story Expert, Screenwriter
Scroll down for annotated screenshots of each step.
1) Let your friends know
This can take awhile ... I whittled down my friends to 98 by the time I got around to deleting the account. It still took over 30-minutes.
2) Backup your account. Directions here: https://www.facebook.com/help/212802592074644
Hell if I know what I'll do with this. Imagine someone will make a digital scrapbooking ap that will handle these files.
4) Don't freak out. You will get a slew of 'oh-shit' emails, especially if you played around with any of Facebook's integration tools on your website. Thankfully we already had workarounds in place for all of these.
Other than some system generated emails (see above) and the loss of any "Login with Facebook" integrations, not much.
In my case, I got two emails from Facebook friends who congratulated me on my move to California ... even though it happened over a year ago 😉
Well that's it for today. Time to turn off my laptop and go eat some grub with one of my real friends. Cheers!
