Log out of Facebook

In the fall of 2007, my Facebook profile was born. This spring, I killed it. But to be fair, it was never really alive. It was just a not-quite-right copy of me.

Facebook isn’t real life — it’s a yelling contest. It’s a blaringly loud 50,000-seat arena stuffed with people who are all trying to convince you that they’re living the dream and loving life.

It’s a bulletin board where you can proclaim your “excitement” and “thankfulness” for your new job, car, house, award or relationship — a brag-factory. It’s a rusty trough filled with ego-slop — just stick your head in and gulp down “likes” until you’re sick.

Facebook is the best place for friends who aren’t friends to meet.

It’s a thousand pictures of the girl who wasn’t interested in you. She’s on vacation in South Padre — holding a Corona — and she’s smothered by three ripped, tan dudes in board shorts.

Facebook is what you check during your nine-to-five so you can see your wealthy high school friends studying abroad in Japan. That Okinawa sunset looks nice compared to the fluorescent lights that shine on you.

Facebooking is the modern version of reading Cosmo and starving yourself because you don’t look like a super model. It’s a fantasy that breeds feelings of inadequacy and depression.

Facebook stalks you down and holds you underwater until you’re gasping for breath. It emails you every day, it makes your phone buzz constantly with pictures of your ex-coworker’s baby and your neighbor’s dog. It digs its claws into your family and friends and uses them as Facebook recruiters.

It intertwines itself into every facet of your life. When you listen to music on Spotify, Facebook broadcasts a live-feed of what you’re listening to, track-by-track. When you shop on Amazon, Facebook profiles you and targets ads directly to you. You can be excluded from jobs if you don’t have a Facebook.

The people who own Facebook make billions selling your personal information. Facebook is an ant-farm. It’s a slave colony.

If Facebook were a man, he would be a compulsive, addicted, neurotic, self-conscious, self-hating man. But he would be gorgeous.

He would tell you exactly what you want to hear. He would move in to your house. He would make you dinner and compliment you for hours — then, in a blink — he’d torrentially point out every fault, shortcoming and disappointment in your life until you couldn’t even get out of bed.

Now, you and I are different people. We live different lives — so I can’t claim to know your Facebook experience.

In the end, I can only speak for myself. Facebook isn’t enjoyable for me — addictive as it may be. It isn’t social in the way I want to be social.