Facebook: Good, Evil, or Neither. I'm on a Mission.

I finally did it.

I deactivated my Facebook. My friends have my phone number. My e-mail address. My real address. I have no idea why it took me so freaking long to do that. It's almost liberating. I can have an actual social life, get my school work done, and figure out who's talking to me because they're just bored, and who's talking to me because they actually want to. Maybe I'll be on here more, actually learning something and taking part in real conversations. I'm by no means saying it's staying deactivated forever, but the goal is for at least a couple months. The Facebook addiction has to stop. I'm 21 years old, I'm in nursing school, I have a pretty good network of friends. I don't need this.

This whole Facebook phenomenon has bothered me from day one. The fact that literally, LITERALLY 50% of people have one, is ridiculous. I will admit, Mark Zuckerburg is brilliant on many levels, but he's created such an easy mask for everyone. People I know in person portray themselves on Facebook exactly how they want others to perceive them, that doesn't mirror how they actually are. It encourages the mask, when in other instances it can actually help people take the mask off. I've seen awesome things happen through Facebook... thousands of people coming together for one cause, praying for someone they don't even know, that they wouldn't have heard of unless Facebook was there. I've gotten to know acquaintances, friends that I 'knew,' but never would have truly gotten to know if it weren't for Facebook. And for that, I'm very grateful. I've obtained precious friendships that I would hate to lose.

On the other hand, I can't get anything done. I'm creeping on people I don't even care about, let alone am "friends" with, looking through their pictures for heaven knows why, wasting hours of my time doing absolutely nothing productive. People were not meant to know absolutely everything about each other's lives. Period. I don't need to know where everyone works, where everyone lives, when everyone is working, how everyone feels, who everyone is dating.  It's not healthy.  Especially in the girlfriend/boyfriend department. Ex-gf/bf's are not supposed to be able to creep the snot out of each other, having to see their next boyfriend or girlfriend, when in most circumstances, before MySpace/Facebook, you both move on with your life and go your separate ways, often not ever hearing about each other at all. It makes the drama that much more frequent, and the obsession that much worse.  Now there is "Facebook Official," a term that has pretty much been coined as "dating."  Your'e literally not dating until it's "Facebook Official."  Then once it's Facebook official it's out for everyone to see, then you end up realizing this person isn't all who they're cracked up to be, and you break up a month later.  Obviously, after you've both posted "I love you xoxoxo BABE" all over each others wall (which by the way, makes me want to vomit).  Doesn't that just look fantastic on your profile. Week long relationships followed by a solemn status that could be compared to something a Jr. High girl writes in her diary.  That's just slightly embarrassing. If you're not embarrassed by that, I'm embarrassed FOR you.

Then we get the point where Facebook changes something and people act like Mark Zuckerburg is a homewrecker. Oh, heaven forbid, he changed the layout of YOUR Facebook. It goes past opinions on the new layout. It goes to a point that is absolutely pathetic. Get over it people, change happens. It's human nature to like routine. Remember when you hated the last update 6 months ago? Yeah. You hated it until you adapted to it. Now they want to change the one you used to hate with one you'll hate for about 2 weeks. Then you'll get used to it, forget it was ever different, and we'll hear nothing more about it. Wow, grow up.

Facebook also makes it incredibly easy to see what kind of person someone is; almost too easy sometimes. Heck, all you have to do is look at their slideshow of profile pictures. It's almost comical how narcissistic some people are. A fine, shining example is the young adults sporting the stereotypical-teenager-half-naked-bathroom-mirror-pictures where the camera phone flash is bouncing off the glass next to their almost-kind-of-not-really-might-be-ribs-ripped-abs. You can also tell when a man has no guts at all, when instead of talking to you in person, regardless of seeing you every day, he sends you messages on Facebook instead, giving you his phone number and telling you to text him rather than asking for yours and having that chance of being declined. I can understand not asking face to face sometimes, even I will sometimes prefer that men do that, but there are better ways than handing her your phone number and saying "text me." I mean seriously. You're not 12. Which by the way, 12 year olds shouldn't have cell phones. But that's a different rant for a different day. Anyways.

Speaking of phones. People have their faces buried in their smart phones all freaking day (I am no exception by any means) and they miss what's going on around them. It's like living in The Sims world. I never knew the point of that game, yet it was addicting. It was like living without having to live. That's exactly what we're doing to ourselves. We're putting our entire life online; school, work, social, business, advertising, music, everything. On one end of the spectrum, its making us thrive, on the other its absolutely destroying us. Its a win-lose situation all in one, and obviously nothing is perfect. I've been on Facebook for a really long time, for years now. I want to see the other side of it.


My mission, that I will report back on in the coming months:

1) Find out really, how hard is it to stay off Facebook; really, how bad is my addiction to the social network?...more importantly..can I actually stay off of it?

2) Am I really missing out, being 21 years old, in college, and not being on Facebook, like EVERY single one of my friends/family?

3) Does getting rid of Facebook get my face out of my phone...or at least help get my face out of my phone.

4) Find out how much society relies on this one site for general communication.

5) Will my quality of life change even slightly if I do or do not have it?

6) Facebook: A terrible means of distraction and masked relationships, or just a harmless means of communication that brings society together? Or the answer that I hate the most, but I know I will most likely arrive at: Both.


I'm curious. So I'm going to try it.

I'm a procrastinator, and if I don't have the one thing that has helped me procrastinate for the last 4 years, who knows what I might accomplish.


I'll update in the next month or two on this, we shall see.


POST-EDIT: I wanted to share this with you as well, this guy has some great points!

"How Appropriate."

Oh, the irony:

Traffic jams stink.  Especially when they are caused by manure.

Howard County highway crews had to hold their breath while they hustled to clean up a manure spill that stretched 1.5 miles on Sunday.  The spill stretched from Main Street in Ellicot City to Frederick Road in Baltimore County.

Howard County Fire Battalion Chief Eric D. Proctor tells the BaltimoreSun that crews spent nearly three hours cleaning up the liquid manure. The spill prompted street closures while crews cleaned the pavement.

Investigators said they are still searching for the source of the manure.

A worker at an Ellicot City wine bar, Mark Bowman, called the smell "disgustingly epic."

___________________________________________________________

Now. The best part. The comments.

--Thought this was an article about Obama's new tax and spend plan.

             ----- Be careful, attackwatch is everywhere!

--Oh did Obama open his mouth again?

--This sounds like an Obama shovel ready job.

--"Obama drops his copy of the 'Jobs Bill' ".

--One and a half miles of Fresh Stimulus spills on Highway... How Appropriate.

--Isn't Joe Biden from md? I would check his head to see if its still full.

--Probably an overflow from the beltway.

--The Bama and his bunch of motorcade must of been going and doing a campain spread.

--Let me know when it hits the fan.



These people said it better than I could. Feel free to add.

Funny. Kind of.

       Well. I mean I honestly shouldn't be surprised.  Is anyone else laughing? I mean honestly, actually laughing? Because I can't help it.  I mean this man has got to be the least qualified thing to step foot into the white house, including his dogs.  Really. I mean really?? He's BEGGING for people to help him pass this jobs bill? He may have said this in a ha-ha I'm kidding fashion. But I would bet fantastic amounts of money that in reality, he's not even close to kidding.


"If you love me, you got to help me pass this bill"  


I'm serious. I'm laughing out loud.

Well, hey man, just so you know, there are very few people left in this country that 'love' you. And those that do, are either deemed medically unfit to make any sort of decision, or as you would rather me put it (in politically correct form), have an "intellectual disability." 


These libtards are making absolute fools of themselves.  I don't have to go very far to find the AttackWatch.com thing, "fight the smears."  I might be delusional from doing 6 hours of paperwork, but all I can picture is Obama standing with a woman's apron on, armed with toilet bowl cleaner and his personal toothbrush gettin' ready to scrub the 'smears' out of the toilet bowl ...ahha.. I think I'm retar--oh sorry, I think I have an intellectual disability.  


It's becoming almost humorous, how obvious and how childish their tactics are.  It's like the little kid that got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, but still keeps denying that they had even known the existence of the cookies to begin with.  I would find it even more funny, if it weren't for the fact that I had to live with the consequences of his intellectual disability.


“I get fed up with that kind of game plan, and we’ve been seeing it for too long. Too long. We’re in a national emergency. We've been grappling with a crisis for three years, and instead of getting folks to rise up above partisanship in a spirit that says we’re all in this together, we got folks who are purposely dividing, purposely thinking just in terms of how does this play out just in terms of this election."


----AHEM. Wait. Did I just hear him admit that..wait. yup.  "We've been grappling with a crisis for three years"


Now I'm just getting this mental picture of an intellectually disabled dog chasing its tail.

This 'crisis' has a first name.


It's B-A-R-A-K.


That crisis has a second name.


It's O-B-A-M-A.


Feel free to switch out crisis with bologna.  It actually still works perfectly.




......Okay, okay I'm done with the slapstick wise cracking..... for now.

Never Forget

Side note: I saw Hack's post after I wrote this, if you haven't seen that video he posted, please watch it.

Also, I sincerely apologize for posting so sparsely, I'm hoping I will get the chance to pick this back up on a regular basis. 

This year it seems different to me. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because I've followed politics a little closer.  Maybe it's because I've grown up a little bit.  I was no where near the attacks. I don't even know anyone who was near them.  I won't pretend that I even slightly know what that day was like for thousands of people.  The thought alone of what they went through is enough to make me tear up.  All of them.  The people on the plane, knowing they're going to die, calling their loved ones to say goodbye.  The person on the other end of the phone in complete shock, shaken with the most helpless feeling anyone could ever imagine.  The people in the Pentagon.  The heroic teamwork of the people on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania before the terrorists could finish their plan.  
The people trapped on the top floors of the WTC. The people in wheelchairs who had no hope of getting down, and their friends, who stayed on the top floor WITH THEM. The firefighters. The policemen.  The medics and the EMTs.  The people running in who never came out. The sound of people hitting the concrete as they're jumping from the top floors of two of the tallest skyscrapers in New York.



 The people watching those towers fall, knowing that their loved one has just been completely obliterated.  Watching them die.  The more I really, really, honestly think about it, it's so gut wrenchingly horrifying that it makes me feel nauseous.  After the attacks, for a short time, America was one nation. Under God. Indivisible. People angry, striving for JUSTICE.  That day, God probably heard more from us than He'd heard in a long, long time.  Those attacks not only traumatized an entire city, but has literally affected every person in the nation.  We all have a degree of paranoia; you can't tell me you don't think about it when you see a plane flying lower than usual.

 New York will NEVER forget.  NEVER.  They can't.  Those two monumental towers that not one person could ever, or would, imagine them falling.  Not to mention now they have to look at a mosque being built right next to it.  It's downright insulting, almost like a flag of the Muslims, like we conquered this.  They have to see it every day.  But what about the rest of us.  The people who had nothing to do with it. Most of us forgot, aside from the 9/11 anniversary, where we watch the heart wrenching specials on TV and the speeches. Blah blah blah.  Politics come back in and we're fighting each other again.  If you want to remember, just look at the pictures.  Pictures say a thousand words...why? Because it's like freezing time.  In a situation like 9/11, you will see people for who they are.  You will see a situation for what it really is.  You can look at the surroundings and take everything in as if God pressed pause in the middle of an explosion.  The sorrow, the anger, the shock, the despair.  And you know what. THEY LAUGHED. They celebrated. They danced on the street.  Does that not make you want to take down every last one of those God-forsaken evil people.


This is why we fight.  It's that kind of thing that makes me want to join the military and kick some butt.  Protect the innocent, fighting for justice, fighting for freedom. Not just for us, but for others too.  It may sound cliche, but minus the politics of it all, that's exactly what we do.  God bless our troops.  Every single soldier, whether they are in combat or not.  They sacrifice their time, their peace of mind, months of their life, sometimes years, to protect this country and the people in it.  Many of them come back, but their heart never leaves the middle east.  Shame on ANYONE who disrespects these men and women.  The people who protest the military in any way make me so sick.  I cannot describe the anger; how ignorant, how stupid, how blind could you possibly be. I bet if their family was stuck in that tower that day, no, I GUARANTEE you if their family was stuck in that tower, they'd think differently. 


Sigh. I digress. A sincere thank you, to our military, for fighting for our freedom, for your freedom, and for the freedom of people you don't even know; and thank you to our firefighters, our paramedics, and our police officers for keeping us safe at home.  God bless every one of you.