Since print media is dying out, what will become of a good ol-fashioned strongly worded letter to the editor? Nowadays all articles and blog entries posted online have comment threads, so well written, cogently thought-out online comments have taken the place of those letters.
Of course, with that comes the comments from people who sounds like they’re wearing tin foil hats, of which this site seems to attract by the multitude. But this comment attached below is brilliant! It’s quite possibly my all-time favorite in the entire 3+ year history of the site.
It comes to us from Thomas Allen of thomasallenonline and it was posted on my essay detailing how people in the U.S., UK and Canada are leaving Facebook, why I quit for good, and why you should possibly consider doing the same
FINALLY – Someone who understands why we don’t need Facebook. I was hitting it pretty hard for quite a while and then one day, I stopped, looked at the screen and said (out loud), “Who gives a shit?”, and logged off. It’s been 8 weeks now and, as you stated, my productivity (I’m an artist) has exploded.
Oh, I tried quitting last summer and felt terribly guilty for ignoring people. Fortunately, I got over it. The sad thing is that my last post stated, “If anyone wishes to reach me, here’s my email address.” Out of 366 “friends”, I heard from 3!
I was accessing Facebook from my laptop – that’s it. It’s the people with smart phones who really did it for me with posts like, “I’m camping and it’s pouring rain.” You’re NOT effing camping if you’re still tethered to civilization.
The final relationship breaker for me was my career. I looked back at the last 3 years and tried to find one instance where Facebook furthered (or even tapped) my career and I couldn’t find a damned thing. If anything, it’s shown people who follow my work that I can be a sarcastic asshole. I prefer to let the mystery be from now on.
So to everyone who’s ever wished happy birthday to their six-year-old, congratulated Tony winners, or ‘dared’ me to support breast cancer in my status update, I say to you, “Enough of this shit. Life is so much better when it’s spent with real people in the real world.”
Go here to see the original anti-Facebook essay
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports You can follow him on Twitter