This entry’s title says it all. I have decided that the bad outweighs the good when it comes to certain social networking sites, and I have gone ahead with deleting both my facebook and myspace profiles. In the past I have thought about deleting them, but the thoughts seemed a bit hasty — not very well planned out or thought about. My main concern was the fear that I would miss out on something or that I would never hear from any of my contacts (with a few exceptions) again. The truth is, I might miss out on something and there’s a good chance I might not hear from a good percentage of my contacts again, but I’ve accepted that. I’ve taken into consideration the past few years, and who I’ve been in contact with, and the fact is that a good portion of these online relationships don’t tend to last very long and/or end up in very bad drama (not to be confused with the good kind?) With that said, I will keep in touch with those people who I consider good friends and hopefully those same people will keep in touch with me. Friendship takes a lot more than leaving comments on myspace or facebook.
I haven’t gotten rid of some social network sites, last.fm is still operating, because I care a lot about tracking the music that I listen to (and art of the mix, because again, it’s not a chatroom for me, just lists) and bibliophil is still there because I like to have a way, online, to keep track of what I read. These were never important in communicating back and forth with people, more like, just keeping track of stuff for me, or for anyone who might be interested. Anyone who visits flickr can find me there, I’m currently participating in the 365 Days project — which is taking a picture of yourself every day of the year and posting it. Surprisingly, I’m not sick of seeing my face over and over, but I’ll give that one some time, too.
Back in November, I decided to back out of my online journal on livejournal. I felt like it was a negative forum in a lot of ways. It became to easy to go on there and write something totally self-absorbed (like this isn’t) and complain and read about other people’s drama and bad things. It also became a place I had to censor what I was writing, and I don’t want to feel like I have to do that. I know, one can filter and make “private” posts and all, but I don’t want to have to resort to that. And, at times, I was writing some really private stuff that maybe I shouldn’t have let other people read. I was reading some stuff that maybe I shouldn’t have read, either. In any case, I feel that (once I got over the withdrawl) a short time after I left I became a lot less anxious and a lot less likely to want to go on and post “woe is me” sort of posts. I am guilty of occasionally going on to read some posts, as I feel like I don’t hear about anyone’s lives any more, but that is soon to change as well. I’ve done a lot of deleting of bookmarks, and now if I want to go I’ll actually have to type it in, and think about it and yell at myself for it. Sad, I know! It’s like going on a diet. You’ve got to throw away all the bad food, you can’t just hide it, because you can still find it eventually.
It doesn’t have to do with one person. It’s just an accumulation of bad experiences (and good! it’s not all bad!) and knowing that I would be better off not knowing about certain people who have had a negative effect on my life. This is a build up of a couple of years. This has been coming for a long time. I’m glad I’m at this point where I’m not so clouded and deluded that I can finally move on.