You know, people should care more about what kind of information they give away. I opened my Facebook account in 2007, that’s like eight years ago. Nothing prepares you for how hard it is to actually have to go through and delete four thousand five hundred-some odd pictures, every post, every like, every message, every event, every activity, everything you’ve ever done on Facebook… not because you have to, but because you want to.
I’ve tried to leave Facebook in the past and I’m sure most of us have tried at one point or another to deactivate our Facebook accounts, but Facebook makes it convenient… allowing you to reactivate whenever you want and everything is pretty much the way it was when you left, usually full of a little bit more drama… and nobody ever really leaves.
Because, at the end of the day… Facebook is where all of our friends are, it’s where our family is. It’s where everybody we need to get ahold of is and their all in one neat, easy, convenient place, and that’s why Facebook is the devil.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve never really been good at goodbye, and this shouldn’t have to be a goodbye… but we make it a goodbye, because everyone uses this Facebook, this tool to stay connected but no one really sees how badly it hurts us.
We give each other little bits and pieces of who we are, the edited self-manifestations of whatever the best version we think we’re going to be is going to be today. We often don’t really project who we really are. We don’t project the pain and the suffering, at least not to the right people. Everybody wants their 10 minutes of fame, nobody wants the consequences for if they ever actually achieve it.
Me deleting my Facebook is more of… ‘Being the change that I wish to see in the world’, as Gandhi quoted best.
I think the less time that we spend on Facebook the more time we have for our neighbors. I think the less dependency we have on the need for ‘friends’ and ‘social interaction’, the more independency we’ll have on actually engaging in our communities and engaging in our relationships and friendships that we have, with us, before us.
I see people sitting on their cell phones in the middle of a crowded room and their fidgeting, and their staring, but they’re not really engaging with the people around them, it’s become weird and awkward, uncomfortable to have a conversation. Maybe it’s my generation, maybe I’m lucky enough to have been there before and after.
Maybe I just miss back when things were real… I miss when you know wanted to know how somebody was, you would go over to their house and you would knock on their door.
You wouldn’t sit and stare at their Facebook feed or try to figure out who they were, or stalk them, or get information, or creep for photos for whatever your next circle jerk is going to be, because people are fucking strange… people are fucking strange.
I told myself I wasn’t going to write a script, there’s no script for this, I don’t even have any fucking notes… I should have had made some notes…
I wanted this to be real. I didn’t want it to be the best version of me… because what’s the point in that?
A week ago, less than a week ago, almost a week ago, we’re getting there. I made a conscious decision… I had smoked my last cigarette out of my pack and I was getting ready to throw my coat on, throw my shoes on, I was getting ready to jump in the car and go buy my next pack of cigarettes. You know every time I smoked one of those cigarettes I just hated myself, I was the kid that wasn’t going to smoke.
All of my friends did, my family did… had they not been given to me in large quantity and at no charge when I was a young and naïve teenager I probably wouldn’t have done that, but low and behold… half my life later I can honestly tell you I quit, and it wasn’t even hard. I just stared down at the empty pack of cigarettes and told myself I was done.
You see my big problem right now and the reason why I am so disassociated with so many people and why most people are having such a hard time on trying to put their finger on just what it is that makes me tick. I quest for control of my life, I quest for control over my addictions, over my fears. I quest for control over my heart, and the constant battle in my mind.
I trust only my intuition, it’s never… it’s never been wrong.
I am blessed to be surrounded by good friends… people who believe in me. I’m sad because like I said I don’t like goodbyes and this feels like it has to be a goodbye. I’m saying goodbye to Facebook, but I fear that by saying goodbye to Facebook, so many of the people that I care about will lose me, or I’ll lose them… but is that such a bad thing… like really?
I look forward to the day that I run into one of you… somewhere, somehow, and you have something to tell me that I don’t already know.
Because weather I wanted to or not, it’s impossible not to subconsciously absorb just about everything and fid bit, tidbit piece of information that Facebook has to throw at you… and when you find yourself in a conversation with someone who would otherwise be a stranger, you feel like you know them even though you have no idea who they are.
So many people believe that they know me based upon what profile I presented on Facebook or what lifestyle I chose to lead. The groups of people I surrounded myself with, but if you really paid attention, if you read between the lines, you would have known that I was always just trying to find my own way.
I’m not a lot of those people… I never really was. Somehow along the way between trying to fit in and just trying to swim along… I lost sight of who I was, what was important to me. I gave so much of myself to everyone else… I never really stopped to ask myself why. Along the way I picked up some bad habits, made a lot of bad choices, saved a lot of lives, broke a few hearts, had my heart broke a few times.
I’ve lived and learned, I’ve loved and lost, I’ve seen more than most could imagine and I’ve imagined more than most can dream. Somehow along the way I way I lost my way, I lost myself… and for the last year or so of my life I’ve been trying to find myself, quietly… perhaps in my own little world.
I am blessed to have some amazing people in my life and I am even more blessed to have known that most of the people who matter the most to me have finally found the people that they needed to find… they have someone to take care of them.
It makes me happy to see Alysha and her new boy, quickly moving towards what looks like a happily ever after. Nate and Amanda… one of these days Nate’s going to realize what that girl wants, it’s shiny… and it’s not a race car 😉
Everybody kind of has their someone, a lot of you guys are a lot stronger now than you were a few years ago. Some of you are still struggling to fight your addictions, some days those battles almost always feel lost.
A lot of people I care about are having kids and starting families, everybody is just kind of moving on and growing up, growing old… but nobody’s really paying attention. We only pay attention to what we want to pay attention to, we put our attention where we think it belongs, and we focus on the things in front of us and not the things around us.
We as people are fundamentally changing, and it’s not for the better. Our world is in a complete disarray, I can’t shake this feeling that we’re heading into humanities darkest days… and the thing that scares me the most is that nobody’s going to know how to communicate, and nobody remembers how to have a conversation. Everybody is too busy looking down to possibly look up.
Because when we’re putting attention where we want to we only put our attention on the things that make us happy. We don’t want to focus on the bad, we don’t want to focus on the things that we can’t control. We don’t want to focus on the war, the genocides, the disease and famine, the aggression… there’s so much aggression.
I guess along the way I lost hope, I lost hope that there was going to be anybody else that was going to be anybody else that was going to come and save us… from ourselves. And I guess that consumed me, but not in a bad way.
You see in order for me to find myself I had to dig deep, to the deepest darkest depths of whatever the fuck I had going on inside me. I had to find my fears, I had to recognize and realize my dreams, I had to accept and admit my failures, and concede the things that were unrealizable.
I guess on one regard I’ve probably been to hell and back again. Since my father’s death a lot of things have changed, but it doesn’t make me weak.
More often than not I feel that people see only what they want to see and they fail to realize or recognize the strength that somebody has inside of them.
My whole life I have never been a follower, I am leaving Facebook but I promise you one day you will be where I am today, one day you will want more than what you have and it’s not going to be in materials, it’s not going to be in technology, it’s not going to be in imaginary things and plastic people.
It’s going to be in the real, the tangible. It’s going to be in your beliefs, it’s going to be in your faith, it’s going to be in your heart. One day you’re going to wake up and you’re going to want more, and maybe then this video will make sense.
I’m leaving Facebook because you should too.
We shouldn’t depend on this place that we cannot trust. We cannot depend on this place where you are for sale, where anyone with five dollars can peddle their goods to you by selecting a handful of keywords based upon your incoherent likes which are then used to target you, and label you, and put you into some demographic, and make you a category… you’re just a fucking statistic, you are my one in one-thousand.
Nothing is free… what are you really giving up?
We use Facebook for years now to make our timelines, our memories, our everything… it’s almost impossible to leave. But ask yourself, if it’s already this hard to leave what’s going to happen in ten years from now when you’ve got almost twenty years of your life stashed away on a website?
And you’re giving all of those memories, all of those pictures and photos and videos, all of those things you had to say, all of those private conversations, all of those events, all of those tagged photos, all of those geo locations and facial data recognition patterns which you involuntarily just gave away to a company that has no respect for you… does not care about you, you are the bottom end of the bottom line.
They take all of this data, and omg it’s so much data and they use it against us. They involuntarily submit us into psychological warfare showing us negative feeds to see if it affects our emotions to find out if we can be… ‘tweaked’, like lab rats… fucking mice.
And for what? We give them this… we give them that satisfaction. You’re not in a relationship until its ‘Facebook Official’.
But ask yourself this, every time you post on Facebook there’s going to be a pause, it’s that pause which is why I am leaving Facebook. It’s that part that feels that I can’t be myself, it’s that part of me that always bites my tongue, it’s that part of me that feels like I’m being watched, that part of me that feels like I am being judged… and it’s never been by you.
I would never let anybody get that close to me in real life, I would never let anybody get that kind of information to be used against me in real life so why should I start now? I can’t control what kind of information or data has already been stored or kept or what’s in my ‘folder’ up to this point but I can control what goes in my folder next and I can control what information I give away.
I believe in privacy, I believe without it this world would be a much, much different place and although we don’t really have it outside the privacy of our rooms or the comfort of our homes we take that for granted every single day.
I’m taking that back.
I don’t want you to assume the worst because I am not saying something. I don’t want to have to scare you when the only thing I have to say or the only links that I have to share are information that I don’t think that you’re trying to find.
It tears me up that I can post something so important and it goes almost completely ignored, but I’ll post something completely transparent and absolutely obnoxious and people will go fanatic about it.
You know this isn’t just about me, this is about you. We all have to change, we all have to want to be better people, you know… be the change that you wish to see in the world.
I might not be there for all of you on ‘Facebook’, I don’t know how long I’m going to keep my phone on, I don’t really like being tied to technology. As a developer and as a designer I am capable of developing technology and software that will help bridge the gaps between privacy and communication.
I hope to one day be able to contribute my hard work and the things that I’ve been working on, maybe they’ll end up changing the world… who knows. Maybe one day you guys will see my name and be like ‘hey I know that guy’, (chuckles)… but that’s not the point.
I might not be here for all of you, but I’ll be there for those in my life… and I’ll be there for my neighbor, I’ll be there for those who need me, but most importantly I am going to be there for myself.
I’ve realized that if I could tell myself one day that I didn’t want to drink soda because it was making it sick, so I stopped drinking soda. I didn’t want to smoke because it was going to kill me, and it was expensive… so I decided that I wasn’t going to smoke, and now I don’t smoke.
You know people that I love… question my well-being, my mental state, my health. They think that I am going crazy or that I’m abusing drugs or pills or something must be wrong with me because I’m so different… but the truth is that they never really fucking knew me.
They saw a broken me, in possibly one of the lowest points of my life and they based their entire census off of that… but I am so much stronger than you know. I have overcome such incredible obstacles, I have seen and endured such… an array of things.
This one’s for all of you.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to love myself, because the only thing that trumps fear is love… and you can’t always depend on everybody else to love you in the way that you need to be loved in a way for you to be okay, because sometimes you’ve just got to love yourself… and take better care of your body, take better care of your health, take better care of your mind.
You’re only as strong as your weakest link, pick your friends wisely. Don’t surround yourself with people that don’t care about you. Don’t always be the smartest person in your group, reach out and find somebody else or find more people that you can learn from. You should never, never stop learning… the moment that you stop learning and you become complacent is the moment you stop living.
You settle down in your little nine to five job and you do as you’re told and you stop asking why. The next thing you know you blink and twenty years has gone by and you haven’t done anything… you’re just working to survive… trying to maintain an otherwise unhealthy lifestyle. But you’re never really getting ahead, you’re just trying to survive.
At some point you have to want more.
Today I turn 33, every other year I feel like I’ve been in some various stage of a video game… never in the same place twice. On my 30th birthday I was fucking rolling balls in the middle of a rave creating what I thought were monumental memories with a handful of people who to be honest I have since forgot most of their names.
At 31… I was just about to fall in love again, but I didn’t know it.
32 was different, last year was different, a lot had happened going into my birthday last year and it was really, really special that Brandy and Randy and the people who cared about me took care of me… I will always be in debt to them for that.
This year is about me, and just like I gave up cigarettes, just like I gave up soda, and just like I gave up everything that controls me. Facebook is just one more thing that I am giving up that controls me.
Like I said, I look forward to the day that I run into one of you somewhere, somehow… and you have something to tell me that I don’t already know. But out of sight means out of mind and most of you are too busy putting your attention wherever you want it and over time you won’t even notice me gone.
To you this is goodbye.
But for everyone else, to those of you whose curiosity gets the best of them. I’ll have a couple websites that I will be writing on, sharing music on. As long as I know that somebody’s listening and that people care, I’ll keep writing.
Without Facebook it will be a lot easier for me to express myself… on sources that I can manage my own content. I’ll have a couple pages left on Facebook that you guys can like and follow which let you stay up to date with whatever I am posting but… I don’t know how frequently I’ll be posting, but that’s really not the point.
Right now in my life I spend a lot of my time working and… I’ve sacrificed so much for so little but I think in the end it will all pay off, I think that what I’ve created is something that’s worth sharing and that people will enjoy, and that people will be able to use… and hopefully when this is done I’ll be able to take some time off from what I am doing and go do some traveling and… learn… educate.
Experience more than this closed society that borders on a police state.
I used be charismatic, I used to be confident, I was fearless. Everybody looks at me like I was the strongest person they know which leaves me to ask myself what went wrong well… I gave into fear. I let technology take control and I started looking at the ground. It became hard for me to look people in the eye when I talked to them because I became guarded.
This is about as real as most of you will ever get when it comes to me. Those of you who love me you’ve always known this side of me. I am flawed, but beautifully broken… and I have very little regret except this video might be getting a little long and most of you guys have like the attention span of a goldfish, for real.
I don’t know, this is just take one and I should just upload it and say fuck it I’m done and give you guys the deuces. But I might just have to watch it or I might not, I don’t think I can do that I think if I watched it I’ll just never upload it, that could be a terrible decision.
Well for what it’s worth this video will be online for a few days and then I will be deleting it as well as every one of you from this account and I won’t come back. Every interaction that I will have with Facebook from that day forward will be ‘automated’. I am writing bots that will submit content to give you guy’s information but if you really want to find me you’re going to have to look for me.
It’s not always going to be easy, sometimes I don’t want to be found… and that’s not a bad thing.
I guess the thing I should ask most of you is to not assume the worst. It breaks my heart how many people think that I am sad because I am not posting or people think I am unwell because the things I was posting are political or against their views or what some might consider questionable, borderline conspiracy theory, or whatever.
Knowledge is power, and ignorance is bliss. I chose the truth, knowledge and… you can’t unlearn the things that you know. All you can do is embrace them, just know that I love you guys and that I may not be here but I will always be there, in your heart. All of the echoes, everything I’ve ever said, every piece of good advice I’ve ever given you, just hold onto it.
Please don’t worry about me… because I won’t be worried about you.
This is me letting go… not of my life or anything dramatic like that this is me letting go of… every time I log into Facebook and it fucks up my day… like John Wayne, Dirty Hairy, and G.I. Joe.
In Closing
You can check me out on erikjon.com, tunedear.com and there’s some pages I’ll do on the Facebook and keep an eye out for Torbull.com because that’s something I am going to be doing. But if you don’t have my phone number than chances are that I probably don’t want you to have it and if you don’t know how to get ahold of me directly than you really just need to know how to get ahold of the handful of people who always will and… realistically most of you should know who those people are.
Seriously though I have to pee like super bad and I drank a lot of fucking water now, like a lot of water. I truly feel that this video is going to be absolutely ridiculous and nobody’s going to want to watch it but I told you it was going to be real and it’s probably just a whole shitload of rambling, little bit of crazy talk.
But in the end I love you all and I’ll be okay, and in the long term most of you will too, and most importantly take care of each other and until we meet again, please remember me.
On Facebook
On the Web