Why I'm Leaving Facebook

About a week ago, I announced I'd be leaving Facebook.

I joined Facebook after years of being away from it with the idea that I could promote my writing and projects to my friends, and extended acquaintances. But over the course of two years, I found myself spending an increasing amount of time on it, doing the same thing that I really enjoyed about social media, but not getting the benefits anymore. This is the story of how the Facebook infection hit me, and why I am quitting it. I'm writing this for my friends on Facebook who don't understand the reasons for this change.

For years I have found that social media brings me unfiltered information, and I reveled in it. I would use it to try to understand people's opinions and how they arrived there. This is what attracted me to G+ as I didn't personally know anyone there. Why do gun nuts feel so attached to their weapons? Why do overtly religious people feel they need to push their religion on to other people through government? Why don't people want to get vaccinated? Why wouldn't people want to protect the planet?

As you can tell, I entered G+ near when it started as a relatively educated liberal with little tolerance for republicans and anarchists? Bahahahaha. Violent assholes.

So on G+ you are encouraged to think of things you are interested in and create "circles" with similar minded people. Well, I was interested in aquaponics. so I pulled in a circle with about 400 people interested in aquaponics....

HOLY SHIT! What is wrong with these people? A huge group of them were gun toting, anti-government idiots! I must go and help them. Crazy republicans.

"Who will build the roads?",
"Won't warlords take over if you don't have a government?",
"What about child and slave labor?",
"Won't corporations poison all the water?"

I'm so smart and you silly republicans are stupid.

It took about 18 months, but in time, I first realized they were not republicans, and had a large disdain for neo-conservatives. These were anarchists. They were free market anarchists who focused on the idea that aggression is fundamentally wrong, and defense is a fundamental right (this is where the guns come in). But they were still nuts, did they want to destroy society?

In time, I was shown how government is largely ineffective, and wastes tons of money. Then I was shown that they are indeed evil in many circumstances. I was shown how society and culture and government are not the same thing. It was explained how simply hiring the service you want would be more effective than being taxed and receiving it as part of a larger organization that also delivers services i do not want. And so on..and so on.

The conversion was not fast, and it took a toll on my emotional constitution. I had extremely smart people take me through many aspects of it slowly. I had others be extremely blunt about some of my long time perceptions and assumptions. I became very worried about my family and friends thinking I had gone nuts. But in time, I had to admit I was an voluntaryist.

But then I got a bug in me that I would return to Facebook. It was nice to hook up with friends from high school and college. It was nice to be able to organize with people in my community. I slowly let on my opinions on government, to the point where now I don't hold back at all, as most people understand where I am coming from by now.

Some, not many, would engage and were truly interested in what I had learned and why I believe these things. Most had a tough time separating "It could be this way" from "This is what we have" When I was mostly talking about the former and didn't really care about the latter.

However, I found that my days were becoming more and more efforts in futility. This certainly didn't get better when people were shocked that Trump got elected, despite me predicting that 9 months prior and assuming it was going to happen. In time i noticed the outrage was amped up and frankly, exhausting as I tried to discuss how most of this is from dependance and faith in government fixing problems.

After a couple of years, the addictive distraction that Facebook is, was hoarding hours and hours of my day. Sure, I like the event planning, the contact with long lost friends, but the social crack and heroin that it comes with isnt worth it. What have I don't today that I am proud of? Did I build something neat? Or did I fruitlessly argue that people have a right to own guns? Did I teach my son to ride a bike? Or did I explain, again, that that map of the ocean near Fukushima was wave height and not radiation level? Did I learn how to do something that I didn't know how to do before, or did I explain, again, that cultural appropriation isn't a thing if its done with respect and that people don't own ideas.

I really don't think this is good for us, as humans, to do this. I do not feel like I am spreading the vision about how we can be free and humanity can thrive like it never has before under the rule of a government. I need to rekindle my personal contact with people and not have it thought a screen. I need to go make to designing and building things and showing how we can live, rather than arguing about it.

Goodbye Facebook. I don't have faith the people will unload you, but I do hope you become less relevant. I hope you become obviated, like government.