08
Dec

The Last Post (no Chorus)

The time has come to say goodbye to Facebook. The reasons are many and varied but, to avoid going off on a full-blown rant, I’ll just state the main ones.

  • Return on Investment: When you consider the amount of time and effort I put into FB, the payback is just miniscule.
  • Hate and Discontent: My stream got clogged with hate speech, mainly coming from the far left. Judicious blocking didn’t help, as particularly vile memes seem to get spread by more people than I could get a handle on.
  • What’s In A Name?: Despite following FB’s instructions — “just use the name most people call you” — what they really meant was “use a name that white nerd bros won’t question.” Everybody calls me Hobbit. So when the happy little douchebag turned me in to the FB name police, I suddenly found all my comments, photos, etc. tagged with the wrong name. I didn’t work so hard establishing the “Hobbit brand” (such as it is) to let it be fucked up by a bunch of greedy cube trolls.

This is not one of those drama queen (fake) exits. I’m not mad at anyone particularly. I’m not leaving in a huff, just with a sigh of relief. So I’m not looking for a bunch of “aw, please stay!” comments, because I can’t log back in to respond to them anyway. It takes two weeks before FB finally decides you’re serious about leaving, and if you log in at any time in that period they figure you didn’t really mean it, so you keep getting the spam from them.

That being said, I would appreciate if you shared this around a bit. I have no idea how many of you that FB will allow to see this, and I’d like anyone who does want to keep up with my misadventures to know where to find me.

There are many of you that I will miss interacting with but you’re all welcome to contact and/or keep track of me from my own site, www.howlinhobbit.com. I’m still on G+ and Twitter as well.

Amusing Final Note: I’ve had this post nearly done for over a week and I haven’t logged into FB for several weeks. They’ve sent me a ridiculous amount of “didja see this?” notifications in that time. They’re apparently channeling Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction or something, because it has sure felt like being stalked.

I’m going to push the button now and start cleaning FB off of my tablet, etc. Be well, all!