Last year, I deleted my FaceBook account.
I was so sick of seeing people on the right demanding a haircut and people on the left predicting doom that I just quit. I couldn’t take it anymore. There were people with college degrees talking about the end of all life on earth; there were people who had high school diplomas saying they had “done the math” on the epidemic and we were all going to be fine.
I stood there, my math degree in hand, aghast at the Dunning-Kruger Effect on display, called up my account options, and deleted my profile forever.
That was the second best decision I made in 2020. (I’ll tell you the first best in November on its one-year anniversary).
After about three months without FaceBook, I started to feel a lot better about life. I felt like I wasn’t screaming alone in the wilderness and that I wasn’t being sold a steady diet of fear-mongering bullshit. I vowed one year ago this week that, if all went well, I’d delete more accounts.
Amazon went next. That was a big step.
Earlier this month, to launch Phase II of my Disconnection, I deleted my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Reddit goes next. In a month or two, I will be deleting my eBay account and my PayPal account.
Google & YouTube come in Phase III which begins in 2022.
Is this inconvenient? Oh, yes. Is it worth it? Immensely.
I never knew how much low level anxiety I was choking on until I started unplugging from all of my social media and online shopping resources. Finding alternatives to these sites in the real world (or from mom & pop online sellers) takes a lot of effort, but it’s worth it.
Of all the sites I still visit regularly, I plan on keeping this blog and my AbeBooks account.
My Job Is Scaring You 