I've had two bits of praise in the last couple of days about being off facebook. One text from a friend and then an email from a colleage giving me a list of websites to occupy myself with.
I actually feel really free without facebook. Not only am I getting on with things a lot quicker but I find myself spending more time doing work. If I get an A in my next assignment I think the lack of facebook will be praiseworthy.
The experience is going well though and it's not as hard as I thought it would be. Now and again I do think of something that would be a good facebook status, and I'm still worried that I'm a bit behind of events that may be taking place, but with all my close friends, any events or relationship changes I've heard about through word of mouth. How refreshingly original.
I thought there would be so much more to report, like I'm missing out on all this stuff that people have seen on facebook and are talking about, but I'm really not. Maybe facebook is just it's own reality. It's what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls a language game, you have to be in the game to understand it. If you're not in it then you don't understand, I guess I'm not in the game anymore...but I don't miss playing it at all.
x
Monday 22 February 2010
Thursday 18 February 2010
Day Two
Yesterday was a lot easier than I thought it would be. It was kinda odd not getting up and quickly checking facebook, though when it came to doing work I got straight on with it, no distractions to hold me back.
However, today I did learn why Facebook can be a necessity. I cleverly forgot to charge my phone last night, it lasted pretty well today until about 5pm. I had just made plans to meet my housemate in the library later, we always do a 'Ring me when you get here' type thing because it could be any time and I could be anywhere in the library. My phone died so I thought: AGH. How am I going to know when shes arriving and where I'll be. Of course, ordinally I could go on facebook and she'd probably be online or I could leave her a quick message saying my my phone has died, but of course, I couldn't.
I then had to go through the process of trying my sim in somebody elses phone, then it didn't work cause her number was saved to my phone, then I realised somebody I was with had my other housemates number so I text her and etc etc you see how the story unfolds.
So the point is. Without a mobile phone and facebook...you hit a brick wall.
Information that I would have found out on facebook, about society meetings and such things people have told me today. Which is nice, and shows that people WILL tell you. Of course, this is only day two.
People have also started betting how many notifications I'm going to have by the end of this. I think about 2000 because a certain housemate of mine *cough Sophie* feels the need to abuse my wall with the alphabet, everyday, individual posts for each letter. Wonderful.
Any other bets for now many notifications?
x
However, today I did learn why Facebook can be a necessity. I cleverly forgot to charge my phone last night, it lasted pretty well today until about 5pm. I had just made plans to meet my housemate in the library later, we always do a 'Ring me when you get here' type thing because it could be any time and I could be anywhere in the library. My phone died so I thought: AGH. How am I going to know when shes arriving and where I'll be. Of course, ordinally I could go on facebook and she'd probably be online or I could leave her a quick message saying my my phone has died, but of course, I couldn't.
I then had to go through the process of trying my sim in somebody elses phone, then it didn't work cause her number was saved to my phone, then I realised somebody I was with had my other housemates number so I text her and etc etc you see how the story unfolds.
So the point is. Without a mobile phone and facebook...you hit a brick wall.
Information that I would have found out on facebook, about society meetings and such things people have told me today. Which is nice, and shows that people WILL tell you. Of course, this is only day two.
People have also started betting how many notifications I'm going to have by the end of this. I think about 2000 because a certain housemate of mine *cough Sophie* feels the need to abuse my wall with the alphabet, everyday, individual posts for each letter. Wonderful.
Any other bets for now many notifications?
x
Monday 15 February 2010
The Social Experiment
Lent: 17th February - 3rd April
During this time I will be giving up Facebook. There are many reasons for this:
1. I am a geeky sociologist and would like to see the social implications for not having a facebook account.
2. I spend far too much time on it and I'm sure it's probably not healthy for my sanity...
3. It's Lent and I want to give up something harder than chocolate and alcohol (though I am also tackling these two weakness')
4. I want to do something related to social Networking/Facebook for my Independent Study next year so this is good preperation
You can keep up to date on how I'm doing on here, however I'd like to try and make it so that its blog doesn't become my escape route i.e I spend all my time on here instead of facebook, I'm NOT replacing facebook with a blog. This is mainly for research purposes and so you can all laugh at me when I crave it - though, will I ever crave it?
It is bad that I might crave a social network site? Which in theory, doesn't do much. I thought that as I was giving it up I should spend loads of time on it until then, but there really is nothing to do on it. Yes we can get up to date happenings for our friends and laugh at the recent groups created, or upload photos. But how can we spend about an hour sat doing THAT? Really?
The main thing I'm worried about is hearing about events/meetings. Especially given that a lot of uni based stuff is promoted or heard about via facebook. Surely I will hear about it through word of mouth?
I will seek to find out all these answers.
My hypothesis is that the first couple of weeks will be the hardest, then I'll just get use to. Although I dread the day of going back on when I will have a stupid amount of notifications - Yes I am aware that you will all abuse this and write pointless stuff on my wall....
Something I've had to do in preperation though is write down all the birthdays during Lent. How bad it that? Without facebook, theres a lot of birthdays that I probably would completely forget about. Our dependency on it really is quite absurd.
So, my adventure begins on Wednesday! I'm actually quite looking forward to it, although perhaps I'm just being really crazy, as my sister just said to me:
"Good Luck with your life"
x
During this time I will be giving up Facebook. There are many reasons for this:
1. I am a geeky sociologist and would like to see the social implications for not having a facebook account.
2. I spend far too much time on it and I'm sure it's probably not healthy for my sanity...
3. It's Lent and I want to give up something harder than chocolate and alcohol (though I am also tackling these two weakness')
4. I want to do something related to social Networking/Facebook for my Independent Study next year so this is good preperation
You can keep up to date on how I'm doing on here, however I'd like to try and make it so that its blog doesn't become my escape route i.e I spend all my time on here instead of facebook, I'm NOT replacing facebook with a blog. This is mainly for research purposes and so you can all laugh at me when I crave it - though, will I ever crave it?
It is bad that I might crave a social network site? Which in theory, doesn't do much. I thought that as I was giving it up I should spend loads of time on it until then, but there really is nothing to do on it. Yes we can get up to date happenings for our friends and laugh at the recent groups created, or upload photos. But how can we spend about an hour sat doing THAT? Really?
The main thing I'm worried about is hearing about events/meetings. Especially given that a lot of uni based stuff is promoted or heard about via facebook. Surely I will hear about it through word of mouth?
I will seek to find out all these answers.
My hypothesis is that the first couple of weeks will be the hardest, then I'll just get use to. Although I dread the day of going back on when I will have a stupid amount of notifications - Yes I am aware that you will all abuse this and write pointless stuff on my wall....
Something I've had to do in preperation though is write down all the birthdays during Lent. How bad it that? Without facebook, theres a lot of birthdays that I probably would completely forget about. Our dependency on it really is quite absurd.
So, my adventure begins on Wednesday! I'm actually quite looking forward to it, although perhaps I'm just being really crazy, as my sister just said to me:
"Good Luck with your life"
x
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