Time to Say Goodbye (And No, I'm Not Talking About Substack Though Maybe I Should Be)
When something is free it means that you're probably the product that they're selling to make mountains of money...
If there were medals to be handed out for over-thinking and indecisiveness then I’d be winning gold this week. This post has been through many forms and came close, multiple times, to becoming another victim of the delete button. But I couldn’t even make the decision to do that! So here goes, I’ll share. I guess that’s at least a decision! And apologies to those who prefer to listen to my posts - no voiceover this time.
I’d been teetering on the brink for months. Perhaps even years when I think about it.
Mulling it over. But frequently coming back to “not quite yet”. Feeling like I’d miss out - on exactly what, I’m not sure. Letting myself be pulled back into that irrelevant, time-sapping, addictive universe once more.
But I knew in my heart that I wanted out.
I started with a small step. Moving app’s to a back page so that they didn’t stare me in the face every time I opened my phone. I noticed that I didn’t miss them. Well, maybe a little. But I found that if I did open them it was now a conscious decision, a little treat of some mindless scrolling.
Then I took another step. I deleted the app’s from my phone. First Instagram. They took to sending me emails to remind me there was stuff to see and posts I’d not seen. I ignored them. Then Facebook. Just to test how much I’d miss them. I didn’t delete my profile. I just made it more difficult to access them and forced myself to walk to my desk.
24th August 2014 - the profile picture that I used on Facebook for more than a decade. It doesn’t even look like me. OMG what was I thinking with that hat? And that totally weird fake-looking smile? I did enjoy those oysters though!
Thinking back I realized that I didn’t even join Facebook by choice. I was sucked in. Seduced by an invite to a birthday event, sent from Facebook, back in 2005 or 2006. Twenty years ago. I liked sharing my photos so Instagram was added to the mix at some point. Think of all that time spent scrolling that I could have used for something more productive, more positive, or even more relaxing.
At first it was fun. Finding people you knew from back in the day. Old school friends. Contemporaries from university or whatever. Seeing where they were now and what they were up to. Connecting with colleagues and getting to know them better. A positive in some cases, but not so much in others where you realized you didn’t really want or need to know what they got up to outside of work or their personal views on politics.
Over time it became nothing more than a repetitive time sap. Occasionally I’d trip over something about a new TV show that I wanted to see. Or a new movie. Or a little update from someone I cared about.
I thought perhaps I could find a community of necrotizing fasciitis survivors. People that I could relate to and who would get what I’d been through. I did and I didn’t. What I found was small (mostly inactive) groups or one slightly larger one that had to celebrate ‘re-birthdays’ every 5 minutes and shared nothing useful or constructive. Not my cup of tea. Oh, and when I mentioned Substack in a post on that same group, and my FREE book on my experience, I got a warning that I wasn’t allowed to ‘promote’ myself for personal gain?! I left.
I was never going to be the person that wished her husband ‘happy birthday’ on Facebook while lying in bed right next to him. Nor could I bother to take the time to document my (generally boring) daily life with multiple posts a day.
Yet I would scroll. And scroll. Flicking through pictures. Adding the odd like where a real friend had done something or been somewhere nice. But I’d also allow myself to be sucked into rubbish - watching videos from people who thought that they were self-styled influencers, who I didn’t know from Adam, and I really didn’t care what they looked like in the latest hideous dress that they’d ordered on line. Yet I still watched.
When it comes down to it I wasted time that I know full well was too precious to waste.
But why have I teetered on the edge of leaving for so long? What held me back from leaving entirely? It’s simple. When it came down to it I didn’t want to lose that connection with a couple of real friends who I didn’t see frequently, but who posted enough that I didn’t want to miss what was going on in their lives.
Then I realized I could probably find another way.
Many of you will have seen the recent court ruling against Facebook and YouTube labelling them as addictive. And apparently there’s a slew of cases coming through the courts behind that one. But that wasn’t what pushed me over the edge.
When I started reading (well, ‘listening to’ to be exact) CARELESS PEOPLE I knew it could be the final straw. But I was oblivious to just how much impact it would have on my perception of Meta, some of the people leading the company, and it’s driving need to keep making more, and more, and more money any way that it can. Ethically or not.
And yes I know, it’s a book by one person. Who has her own bias. But even then the content is too horrific to dismiss.
Let me go off topic for a minute, I’ll explain why a little later.
Does anyone out there remember ‘The Clothes Show’? It was a TV show that ran in the UK on BBC One from 1986 to 1998. And apparently was reincarnated - after I’d left the UK - from 2006 to 2009 on UKTV Style. Not only was it a popular TV show, it also spawned a monthly, glossy magazine, and an annual live event.
The Clothes Show was a consumer exhibition brand held annually from 1989 to 2016 in December at the Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre, and in Liverpool in July 2017. The event showcased the latest fashion, beauty and music. Wikipedia
Mum and I went to the live event a couple of times in the early 1990’s. I loved it. I adored fashion, making clothes, and like many young women dreamed (quietly) of being a model. So I was ecstatic to find that you could queue up and book yourself a little photo shoot on the day. And from those photos they would create a (fake) magazine cover with your face on the front! I was in heaven. My picture, stored in my memory box of treasures, is a bit dirty and distorted, but here it is…
It must have been December 1992. Long before the era of ‘SoMe’. I was young, impressionable, just a couple of years post a period of anorexia, and like so many young women I was way too worried about my appearance.
These days it seems that Facebook sells young people to the corporate world. Young people are one of their ‘products’, as I found out in CARELESS PEOPLE. Imagine that I’d put this picture (or another selfie) up on Facebook. And then I took it down. Perhaps I got self-conscious. Thought my face was too round. My lips a little wonky. Facebooks algorithms could spot that I’d done that and would then bombard me with beauty adverts. How would that have affected my young, vulnerable mind? I can’t imagine it would have been in a good way.
And that’s just one small example of the way they seem to operate - there are many more that are far more shocking. As I got to the end of the book I decided that I was done. It was time.
I guess I have to class myself as ‘lucky’. Nothing ties me to either Facebook or Instagram. I don’t need access to the job boards they host or local community / interest groups. I have no need to promote my business on there. And if I ever get to promote my book then I’ll find other more creative solutions.
I remember years ago I did make an attempt to leave Facebook. I hit the button to delete my profile. Then I got an email. Your profile is still there if you want it - you just have to log back in. WTF?! A few weeks later I gave in and did indeed log back in. FOMO won.
So I went looking for that delete button again. Could I find it? I hunted for what seemed like ages, though it was probably just a couple of minutes as my patience had run out and I wanted to get this done NOW! Still I couldn’t find it.
So what did I have to do? I had to Google it! Twice obviously as the button is hidden in two different places in the Facebook and Instagram worlds. How ridiculous is that? Finally I found THE button(s) buried where you’d least think to find them.
Clicked. A sigh of relief. It was done. I was free.
But was I?
There was a final (email) insult still to come.
I’m an adult. I know my own mind (most of the time)! And it had taken me forever to find the right button. But still they thought that perhaps I’d made a mistake?! They wanted to give me time to regret my decision. So generous. And yes, that’s dripping with sarcasm. They sent me this email - I got something very similar from Instagram. Did they have any idea that they’d just put the final nail in the coffin?
I’m thinking about holding a little celebration on the day. To raise a glass to the time I’ve got back, to no more doom scrolling, and to the fact that I’m no longer part of the Meta sales machine. Except for WhatsApp that is, but you have to know which battles are worth fighting and right now it’s not that one.
Do I miss it? Yes, a little so far. But not enough to regret it.
I would dearly love to leave LinkedIn too. It seems to have degenerated into Facebook by another name. But I can’t right now because of my business. It’s my online CV. But in a few years, when having a profile on there is no longer important to me from the work perspective, then it will be part of the past just like Facebook and Instagram. I’ve already moved my business ‘website’ over to a page on my Substack. And deleted the LinkedIn app from my phone so I’ll just access it from my computer when needed.
And of course I worry about Substack. It’s also free, unless you choose to pay for newsletter subscriptions of course. Will we ultimately become the product and be sold to the highest bidder? As a platform I’m well aware that it’s also far from perfect - I’m not even going to mention what’s been going on this past week as there are plenty more eloquent posts about who should or should not be on here. But at least (for now) it’s a place I enjoy and that serves my purpose.
I guess time will tell.
Thank you for reading or listening along. If you liked this post then I’d love it if you would click on the heart and add a comment about what resonated for you – it means a lot to me to hear from each and every one of you.
In case you missed it, I published my book - Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life - here on Substack last year. If you’d like to read it then you can find each chapter by clicking HERE and it will take you directly to the webpage dedicated to the book.
If you would also be kind enough to share it I would be eternally grateful as it will help more people learn about these deadly infections. Maybe one day that knowledge will save a life.
Thank you!
I'm using Facebook and Instagram less and trying to spend more time on Substack, though I only have 83 subscribers here. I do prefer Substack as there are more quality posts.
Really interesting piece. The only social media I have ever used is Substack, so it is interesting to hear what the others are like. I understand your mixed feelings. When I used to work in an office I often felt as though I had come into a group conversation without having the background to it, because everyone else was on Facebook. I do feel that a lot of socialising 'energy' has gone into these platforms now, which is not good for real-life encounters. On the other hand I have found Substack immensely enriching, and met some lovely people here with similar interests to me. It's a conundrum. Thanks, this was very informative.