No, this post has nothing to do with a relationship, well, actually it does, but not in the way you may think.

I have ended a relationship less than 24 hours ago, but I did the dumping, I wasn’t the one dumped, and it wasn’t even a relationship with a person, or a pet, or a job.

I dumped Facebook last night.

I am probably going to ramble a bit, but I promise there is a salient point to all of this.

It was a bit of a hard breakup, any breakup or separation with someone or something that has become an ingrained, everyday part of your life is a difficult decision to make, and an even more difficult decision to execute. Just like with other difficult choices I have made in my life before this, people, jobs, and other such things, I have been thinking about it for awhile and weighing in the positives and the negatives and what it would mean for other aspects of my life.

I think the positives outweigh the negatives though, part of the positives are eliminating the negative aspects of Facebook in the first place. This applies to Facebook as well as MySpace if anyone actually still uses that, or any other social network that is out there that isn’t focused on a specific topic. I say that as an exclusion to other semi-social networks like Flickr, or LinkedIn, or even FourSquare; All of those have some fairly specific in their nature and are not as insipidly invasive as Facebook.

All of this goes back to what I think is the real contradiction of social networks and social networking, it’s not actually social. Partially because so many people have a misunderstanding about the internet and they don’t realize that the internet is not real, therefore we have developed a culture of the illusion of being social.

We have developed a culture of the illusion of being social.

From the Merriam Webster dictionary:

Social: relating to or involving activities in which people spend time talking to each other or doing enjoyable things with each other

That’s the first definition listed, there are 2 more listed as well.

– liking to be with and talk to people : happy to be with people

– of or relating to people or society in general

I think if you read any of those quickly, then they can certainly apply to the use of a social network, however I think upon some deeper reflection, only the last one actually applies to a social network, but everyone thinks of the first two as the ones which describe them.

Prepositions are some powerful parts of speech that people often overlook and don’t think about their real meanings and the affect they have on the definition of a word. In these definitions, the key prepositions are those of “with” and “to”, they’re so small, yet they carry so much meaning and yet people ignore them so easily.

With: used to say that people or things are together in one place

 – used to say that two or more people or things are doing something together or are involved in something

To: used to indicate the place, person, or thing that someone or something moves toward

– used to indicate the place where someone participates in a particular activity

“Together in one place”

“Doing something together”

“Someone or something moves toward”

Now, this is where people’s lack of understanding of the internet comes into the picture, the internet is not real, it is not a physical place, and you are not actually moving toward anyone, and you are not together with those who you interact with online. Yes, you are interacting, but it’s not together, it’s not in unison, it is not a social interaction. Posting to a person’s wall and then them responding 10 minutes later, or 10 seconds later, it’s still not together.

You aren’t talking to a person, you aren’t focused on that person, you aren’t interacting with them, even when you add another person or 10, it’s not a social interaction because you lose all context for emotion, physical cues, tone of voice and timing. When you have a conversation with someone, hearing their statement and then thinking about how to respond for 10 minutes or a day isn’t going to work. It’s cold, it’s calculating, it’s unnatural for what is a real social interaction.

For a real world example, let’s take it literally for the way a social network actually works. Imagine that you have something you want to share with your friends, so you post a note on a bulletin board on the front door of your house, then your friends wander by on their morning walk with the dog, or they stop by on their way to work quickly and read what you have to say. Then, a few of those people have a reaction so they respond to you by writing a note for you and then tacks it under the message you left and then you see it when you get home.

What was social about that?

NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

This is the illusion that I talk about, we post on each other walls, lists, we share things with other people that we wouldn’t share with people in the course of regular conversation, things that are so insignificant that we don’t even care about them.

It’s not social to sit, alone, in your house watching tv by yourself and bouncing around on Facebook commenting on this or that, liking this, posting a photo of your eggs or the new sneakers you go, or bragging about how cute your child, dog, or boyfriend is or what funny thing that any of them did today.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that there are some great aspects to the site, like being able to keep in touch with people or organize events, or share pictures of your kids with people who want to see them without needing to email dozens of photos to dozens of people. There are other methods to do this sort of thing though, and this is where Facebook has capitalized in order to get what they want… they have taken advantage of our greatest weakness, the fact that we have become an inherently lazy society. This is similar to Amazon’s capitalizing on the same thing, we are lazy, we want everything in one place and we want it to be as easy as possible, which is exactly what Facebook has accomplished, the problem is that we are so enamored with how easy it is and how easy it has made certain things for us, that we don’t realize the negative effects that this has had on us, both individually and as a society.

So, this is the main issue I have and have developed through the use of Facebook, and it’s what I want to change at least about myself, and maybe hopefully a few other people out there in the world. I want to actually be social with people, I want real experiences and I want real people actually in my life that actually are willing to put in some effort to be part of my life, not just tag along because it’s easy.

There is more I have to say on this, but I don’t want to overwhelm in just one entry… this will continue with more in the future… maybe tomorrow, maybe next week…

Comment is you want, or don’t, I don’t really care if you do, but one thing I would like to have you do is think, just think for a little bit about your time, your life, your experiences and the people with whom you are actually TOGETHER with during those times, during that life, and are part of those experiences.

So Ned Cleary is no longer on Facebook.