Chronicles of Faceb**k Deletion: Chapter Deuce...

I want to thank Jack Burton for his hospitality. Whether his decision to allow my voice to be heard is genuine or simply an Affirmative Action quota, I can live with the end justifying the means here. I preface my Chronicles by saying that when it comes to technology, there are many different ways to complete the same task. The journey I am taking is a self-imposed one that I hope the end result is a significantly lowered carbon footprint within the Internet. In any case, I present to you......

If you missed Chapter 1, refresh your memory HERE ...

Chronicles of Facebook Deletion

Chapter 2: You’ve made it so you’re never truly unplugged, nor have you made it easy to find all the outlets.

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.” - Morpheus

A little backstory before discussing today’s adventure (Since this is a journey I’m sharing with you and we’re taking together, you should probably know a little about me and my reasoning. Think of this as a cross country road trip vice a daily commute in the Slug Lot (DMV reference)):

So a question that may be prevalent for the readers out there is: Why are you deleting your Facebook? To that I ask: Why does anyone do anything? Why do hot dogs come in packs of 10 and hot dog buns come in packs of 8? Why do people in wheelchairs have dirty sneakers? Why do we build Fountains? Truth is, there are many reasons I could call on for why I’ve made this decision, and truth be told, none of them are malicious. The biggest one is actually just a matter of pragmatism. It’s easier to clean my “friend slate” by switching to another site and sending the invites vice individually unfriending people one at a time. I realized the other day that I don’t actually know 329 people, nor would I pretend to, nor would I want them all to know me. But when you take that away, I guess I’m just saddened by what Facebook has become. I’m somewhere between how Common felt for H.E.R. and how Nas felt in Ether (What's sad is I love you 'cause you're my brother, You traded your soul for riches). However I’m not naive enough to avoid realizing it’s my own fault. I accepted the friends that invite me to Farmville, I accepted the friends who change their middle name to *supaheadbuttabiscuitsshooteminthefaceinternetgangstagitmoneygoonsquad*, I accepted the friends who get tagged in Gucci Sneaker Heels, but most of all: I accepted Facebook: The all-inclusive symmetric communication model of Social Networking (more on what I mean by that next time, on to why you’re here)

Picking up where I last left off, I deleted about 15 more of my photos and felt a need to move onto another aspect: Connected Websites and Apps.

As I said, I have a lot of profile photos that require manual deletion. A lot in this case being 200 as of now. I fear that coming back to just delete pictures everyday would weaken my resolve. I decided to look into How to Permanently Delete Facebook within Facebook itself. This will be my final step at some point so I figured a little more recon wouldn’t hurt. I already knew the answer via the Internet (more on that later) but I was curious on how complicated the process is made and how much you’re not helped with it by the site itself. 

To my surprise the option to delete is not an option within your settings. The closest you get within your options is to Deactivate your account, which for the record, merely makes your account inactive for others to see your information. Facebook still retains all of your uploaded data (photos, videos, statuses, entered profile information, etc…) should you want to come back, and coming back is a simple as logging in again and specifying to be reactivated. You actually have to navigate to the Help Center and search for How do I permanently delete my account? You’ll then receive an explanation of how deactivating your account gets the same effect of people not seeing your account while still leaving the option to come back, and that if you’re “Super Cereal”, you should submit your request here. Another window pops up explaining this again that will need another Submit click. A FINAL window pops up stating “You are about to Permanently Delete your Account. Are you sure?” and that if you are, you’ll need to enter your password and enter the letters from a CATCHPA prompt to finalize the process. Next you should receive an e-mail that the process has started and that you should not log into your account for approximately 14 days. Logging in during that timeframe results in your account being reactivated and the process being aborted (possibly for good and cancelled, but at the very least started all over).

NOW….enough people are thinking 14 days isn’t too difficult if you’re already dead set on deleting your Facebook, but here’s what I believe you didn’t think about and I’m sure none of those prompts told you about:

+If you live in 2011, there’s a good chance you have a smartphone of some form. All of which have a Facebook App. By default, these apps launch when you turn on your phone. Soooooo……You turn on your phone, Facebook app launches, guess what? You’ve just logged into Facebook. Process Aborted!

+If you live in 2011, you’ve browse the Internet. While browsing, you’ve noticed how simple Facebook has made it to connect to content you needed a website account for. Washington Post comes to mind, CNN, ESPN, hell even the Dominos Tracker, and so on and so forth. Soooooo….you open a webpage in the morning, want to read an article or comment on something before you start your workday or order a pizza online and want to share your tracker, you use Facebook Connect to see the content……Process Aborted! because you just logged into Facebook via Facebook connect. 

I can continue to rant here, but the point is that removing your connection to other websites and apps is essential to the deletion process. Facebook has such a far reach within the Internet that as you browse other sites, you don't realize how many times you're actually connecting back to it for enhanced content. Good news here is that the removal process isn’t very arduous; you go to your privacy settings and remove all of your platform sites and apps. As for a phone app, I recommend changing your login information or your e-mail address within the Facebook settings to an address you never/rarely use or isn’t real yet still resolves. What this will do will cause any apps that have your credentials saved within them to fail to log you in automatically. And so, that’s what I’ll do today…red or blue pill, you live and you learn.

Adios, till next time.

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