The changes were subtle, at first, and mostly positive. When I went online, I found myself getting bored much more easily. There simply wasn't as much to do with the many idle moments of the day. This gave me more of an impetus to do some exploring and find new regions of the vast internet to enjoy, or even to get out of my chair and find something useful to do. I also found myself less likely to get irritated, possibly owing to my lack of exposure to irritating things. Overall, life became ever so slightly more interesting and less stressful. Ever so slightly.
Meanwhile, Google+, the young up-and-coming, was not taking off as spectacularly as I’d hoped. Sure, it had plenty of cool-sounding features, but very few of my friends had leapt onto that particular wagon yet. Why should they, when they still had Facebook? The few friends I did have on Google+ tended to post things on it as an afterthought, if at all; they were already posting to Facebook, and using one more network would be more hassle to them, not less. More than once I logged onto Google+, started a hangout, sighed, and logged out, having made no soulful connections energized by clever, streamlined technology.
Something else was happening that I had not anticipated. When I first joined Facebook in 2007, it was growing in popularity but not even close to the memetic leviathon that it is today. Until then, it had been restricted to those with email addresses affiliated with approved schools and companies, and had only just changed that policy. This made Facebook the elite, non-trashy, intellectual alternative to Myspace, which was fast becoming a breeding ground for glittery backgrounds and instantly-playing pop music videos. Not being on Facebook in 2007 was a nonissue, unlikely to have much effect on one's social life.
When I quit Facebook four years later, I naively assumed my life would return to something like its previous facebookless state (apart from the unrelated changes my life had taken since then). Unfortunately, the Facebook I left was the not the Facebook I had joined in the first place. It had not only grown and mutated like a fast-adapting alien life form introduced to the lush and unsuspecting ecosystem of Earth, but it had infiltrated the rest of my world behind my back, snaking its tendrils into every facet of the media and culture around me. I did not see the extent of the invasion until I myself was free of its grasp, and could look upon it with untainted vision.
Ads not only online but on TV and in printed media always contained the phrase "like us on Facebook!" along with a promise of better deals or special updates for those who did. Some even included a link to a Facebook page in lieu of an email address or even a phone number - meaning that without Facebook, I had no way to contact them. And it wasn't just advertisers who had been infected - everyone seemed obsessed. Hanging out with friends (in person, of course; I have yet to successfully attend a “hang out” of the Google+ variety) often devolved into a discussion of “Did you see what so-and-so posted on my wall?” Facebook was referenced on other websites, on TV, on the streets, everywhere. Everywhere I looked it was Facebook this, Facebook that, Facebook Facebook Facebook!
It got a little grating at times.
I wish I could say that the great Facebook invasion (turning all my friends and family eerily like-minded, almost turning them into a hive mind connected through an invisible newsfeed) was simply a matter of superficial annoyance, but the truth is the effects ran much deeper. Slightly more serious consequences began when my best friend, whom I knew was planning a Christmas party, neglected to invite me. As the date of the party approached, I began to worry. I was secure enough in our friendship to assume I was welcome, but at least wanted a notification of the start time, and part of me was still old-fashioned enough to be more comfortable with a formal invitation. Eventually, with only a few days left, I broached the topic.
“Have you sent out invitations?” I asked.
“Yeah, I set up an event on Facebook,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Facebook.”
“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting you quit."
One might assume that such omissions were simply part of the adjustment process, a transitional situation in which people were still getting used to the idea of me not being on Facebook. But as the months went by, I kept finding myself left out of important social interactions, and it didn't seem to be getting any better.
In September, eleven months after I quit Facebook, I wanted to talk to a friend with whom I hadn’t been in touch for a little while. I gave him a call, but his phone went straight to voice mail. Knowing that he works an odd schedule sometimes, I assumed that he was at work, so I left him a message so he could get back to me.
A week went by.
Thinking he perhaps had been planning to get back to me, but then forgotten, I called again. Again, his phone went straight to voicemail. I called a few more times over the course of a weekend, wondering at my bad luck that he just happened to be at work each time I called. If it had been any other friend, I might have shot him an email, but I knew that this friend preferred not to use email. I gave him another week to get back to me, and by the end of that week I had begun to get nervous. Had I somehow offended him? Or had something happened that was keeping him from returning my calls?
I was talking on the phone to another friend, the same friend who had neglected to invite me to her party the year before. I mentioned my difficulties getting in touch with our mutual acquaintance. “Wait,” she said. “How long has it been since you talked with him?”
“About a month or so. Why?”
“I think he changed his phone number.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. I read about it on Facebook. Hang on, I’ll see if I can find the post.” I heard the sound of her typing fingers over the speaker of my phone. “Ah, I found it. He changed it about a month ago. Ready to write this down?” I grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down the numbers she read to me, then we said our goodbyes and I dialed the new number into my phone.
He promptly answered. “Hello?”
“You changed your phone number,” I said accusingly, but also lovingly.
“... Yes.” He clearly didn’t think this was cause for alarm.
“And you didn’t tell me.”
There was a pause. “But I posted it on... Oh yeah! I’m sorry.”
It wouldn’t be the last time that I missed out on some important social newsbit that had been disseminated on Facebook, and nowhere else. I would have thought that any important information would come to me by other avenues. Most people knew my phone number, and I was readily available by email and on Twitter and Google+ (which I still had not given up on), so I did not anticipate being so out of the loop. After all, if you have an important bit of information you want to share with as many people as possible - say a party, the results of an ultrasound, or some crucial gossip - it’s in your best interests to distribute it in as many ways possible, just in case not everyone is paying attention to the same channels. At least, that is what I had assumed based on many years of experience. It turns out, this is no longer the wisest course of action. These days it's far more effective to restrict all your communications to a single channel, because all you friends and family, without exception, are using Facebook.
Quitting meant that my friends would have to go out of their way to keep me in the loop, and it really wasn’t worth it to them. Once I realized this, I could have been offended, but instead I felt humbled, even ashamed. My decision to quit Facebook had been engineered to convenience me, not to inconvenience others.
But this did not cause me to reconsider my decision. I was out, and overall, I enjoyed it. Over the months I grew accustomed to being sometimes out of the loop, and to having to make a little extra effort to communicate with the people I care about - after all, I could hardly expect them to go out of their way to include me if I wasn’t willing to go a little out of my way to be included. I was soon to learn, however, that the practice in assertive self-inclusion I got from those first few forgotten invitations and misfired communications would soon be tested with some truly harrowing disasters.
To find out what happened next, go on to Part 5.
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