Facebook - going cold turkey

Hi my name is Brokensword and I am a Facebook addict. It has been seven days since I deactivated my account but I have the username and password of one of my facebook friends. She gave it to me for another purpose but in the last few days, I am ashamed to say that I log on as her and continue to feed my addition.

It all started in April 2007 when Heartwarmer sent me this:

I've added you as a friend on Facebook...
I've requested to add you as a friend on Facebook. You can use Facebook to see the profiles of the people around you, share photos, and connect with friends. Now everyone can join Facebook, even if you couldn't before.----------this facebook thing is creepy, you could meet all kinds of people from your past. Join----------Thanks,Heartwarmer

P.S. Here's the link:http://www.facebook.com

Heartwarmer has:
11 friends5 wall posts

Life has not been the same since. A few months later (I had three friends on my page) I considered shutting down. Although I was using the site to chat and write on the wall of my 3 friends, I thought I can do the same thing with my normal email address. The next morning I logged on and an old friend had found me. It was then that the potential of it all hit me because, his page, was just so interesting and hilarious and sweet. I was always in touch with the three friends I had so the connection was always there, the new friend allowed me to catch up in a different way I suppose.

So ja, I decided to stay.

A few months have gone and I find myself thinking:

1. I am an addict and a spy – this is why I am illegally and secretly using a friend’s account. I am a voyeur, I love spying on people. Except it is not spying when the information is out there in ‘public’? But yes, I go onto people’s pages, people I do not know, groups’ pages I have no interest in. It is like Alice in Wonderland, the rabbit whole is never ending and some of what you discover you wish you did not discover.

2. Facebook groups are scary, in why they get together and what they think they can achieve. One of my friends on Facebook is a member of the following groups:

DONT LET THEM CHANGE THE NAME OF CAPE TOWN!! ▪ Help us stop Jacob Zuma from becoming South Africas next President ▪ Keep Jake White as coach ▪ You know u live in the View when... ▪

Other than being extremely racist groups, they are extremely stupid. I am not going to waste further energy on this. But I am planning to interrogate my facebook friend on this and bring him into the dark side.

3. I hate chain letters – a few of the friends, not all, think the purpose of facebook is to forward everything they receive and find on facebook to ALL their facebook friends. This is the main reason why I deactivated, I got depressed by the fact that when ever I opened my page, I would have four notifications from 2 friends, just by seeing which friends I knew, it was not them saying, hey Brokensword, how are you? No! Chain letters about some kid that went missing blah blah blah. Update on the new function they have added to their page. And the worst: send this to 10 of your friends and something good will happen to you. Aaaahhhhhhggggggg! I do not mind the video clips and pics and stuff but people need to think before forwarding, will Brokensword like this? My 2 friends refuse to give me this courtesy and even sent me rugby world cup stuff!

But Facebook is also amazing because:

1. One person can connect with 200 people. 200 people? As you can see, Heartwarmer above had 11 friends in April, she now has over 200. When I shut down my account I had 29 friends. I probably could have gotten more if I was a Facebook slut, I prefer being a Facebook spy! Not to say that Heartwarmer is a Facebook slut, poking people she hardly knows, making the first move and responding to every friend request. All I am saying is that I am more conservative and she is a Facebook…, not slut but maybe a Facebook super flirt. I bow down though to you Heartwarmer and wonder how do you keep up with these friends?

2. Facebook groups can be interesting (opposite of 2 above) – Yesterday whilst doing my spying I discovered a group called six degrees of separation. Now this is the really amazing thing about Facebook, I am six people away from George Bush and if I search hard enough, I will find the link. With Facebook this experiment is made so much easier. I am sure all you Facebook people have looked into your friends' friends and it gets interesting when you follow the thread.

3. Activity - I played the never-ending movie quiz. I asked stupid questions that my Facebook friends gave interesting answers to. I updated my status often and enjoyed finding out the status of other people. I wrote on people’s walls, and became a vampire and checked my horoscope and downloaded music and dedicated music and looked at everybody’s photo albums and took more quizzes and and and.

I do not know how long I will last; maybe I will beat this addiction and start a new life. Maybe it will swallow me up and I will never see the sun again. I do not know. I am taking it one day at a time. The goal for today is to tell my friend that she should change her password. After that, it will be cold turkey.

Just like a dealer and a junkie, the following exchange took when I signed out:

Brokensword: I have to go

Facebook: Why? Things were going so well? Is our shit not good enough, is your man giving problems? Why baby why? Choose from the list below.

Brokensword: It could be all the above but the thing is, I spend too much time here. I am neglecting my real life. I long for the human touch.

Facebook: Human touch is way overated baby you know that. We send hugs and kisses and hi fives and bitch slaps and more. You know you never had it so good in real life.

Brokensword: I know it’s true, but I need to focus on this life for now.

Facebook: But we can also fix that, we won’t send you so much information no more baby. It is will be only what you want.

Brokensword: But you know I have to have all of it. No, I have to go.

Facebook: Okay, we will let you go, but know this, we will be here when you decide to return. Just give us your user name and password and it will be all good with us again. When you get sick and tired of the real world we will be here for you baby

Brokensword: Okay, Good bye. (double click, sigh, sniff, sob)