The ignorance I’m experiencing from not being on social media is kind of blissful—I don’t think I’m unaware of anything I really need to know about, but it’s kind of nice to not be caught up in whatever new thing everyone is enraged over toady. I miss not reading about that stuff about as much as I expected: It was good entertainment, but it wasn’t vital to my life.
What I do miss more than I expected is having an easy way to express myself and talk about things. For example, The Atlantic had this glorious endorsement of Hillary Clinton, and all I wanted to do was share, share, share. “[T]he most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency”? C’mon. I need that on my Facebook page! Who wants to discuss?
The other thing I’ve noticed is that Facebook in particular is absolutely dastardly in its efforts to win you back once it realizes you’ve left. A few days ago, I got an email informing me about some random thing some friend had posted, which I don’t remember ever happening before. There was an Unsubscribe button, so I clicked it, and it brought me to…Facebook. So I was able to unsubscribe, but not before they had made darn sure I was aware that I had 14 unread notifications! Plus, maybe it’s my imagination, but the number of alerts I’m getting on both my phone and desktop seems to have increased. I don’t want to bother turning them off, because I’ll just turn them on again in November. But Facebook clearly misses my business.
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