Why I Deleted Facebook

I deleted Facebook this week. 

I'm off of most social media now. I had been on Facebook for 18 years. I remember when Facebook became available for my college during the fall of my senior year. We were all pretty excited about it. I've got pictures and posts about my life ever since, but it was time to delete it. 

Here's why I deleted most social media:

Facebook: I left this site because I couldn't use it the way that I wanted to. I felt like I was having to constantly tell them to hide sections of Facebook. I realized this week that I kind of spent the last year leaving it. I went 6 months last year without posting at all. I put time limits on using it. I even unfollowed almost every page. Facebook was constantly changing how it worked. Instead of showing me friends and family that I wanted to see, they were showing me posts and people that I didn't sign up to see. Sometimes it was inappropriate things. I decided it was time. 

Twitter: I left this site when things got especially crazy a year or two ago under new ownership, I decided I could have nothing to do with that company. That his freed my mind a lot. I'm really thankful.

Instagram: I never posted a whole lot on Instagram, but my problem with it was that it definitely was showing me inappropriate things. There just wasn't a way to use the app very much without seeing things I didn't want to see. 

You can see my big problem is that algorithms that run the major social media sites we're not set up to serve me but to get me to serve them. I felt like I was playing whack-a-mole with the worst parts of social media. I also enjoyed what others thought about my posts too much.

I still have LinkedIn, but I don't visit it more than 6 times a year.

What will I do without Facebook? Mainly live. Also I will post on here. I want to post more about gardening, fitness, coffee, books, and other things I'm thinking. I wish the era of the internet would come back where lots of people kept interesting blogs that talked about the things they worked on and the things they were thinking about. I remember one writer that I really enjoyed called the Internet Monk. He died of brain cancer a number of years ago. I hope to contribute to the interestingness of the world. So if somebody wants to learn about special varieties of tomatoes combined with coffee recipes and kettlebell tips, then they have a place to find it.