After years of threatening my digital self with drunken tirades, and passionate sermons against inherently anti-social behaviors, I’ve finally done it – I killed my Facebook Profile. Read on to see why I made the decision, how I did it, and the aftermath of my public display of digital murder.
Why should you delete your Facebook profile?
Here’s the questionnaire I prepared to help me make this decision to euthanize my primary social media platform:
Why do I want a Facebook profile?
THEN: I want to reach out to old friends, classmates, etc… in the easiest way possible. Oh, and check-up on all of my ex-girlfriends and former crushes. Also, I hear you can make money with Facebook. That would be cool.
NOW: I don’t want to reach out to old friends the easiest way possible. I want to hang out with them and make some memories the old-fashioned way. And I hate myself for my ridiculously anti-social, creepy leanings towards digital stalkery
Why do I need a Facebook account?
THEN: Some of my friends insist that Facebook is the only way to get in contact with them. That, and I have over a dozen Facebook Business Pages that I manage for clients that are linked to my profile.
NOW: Any friend insisting on Facebook is likely just avoiding a face-to-face smackdown for not showing up to my birthday party. And last I checked, all of my friends have cellphones and email addresses. Oh, and Seth is managing our clients’ business pages.
What kind of “social” do I really want?
THEN: I love conversation of all kinds. Having lots of friends, in-person and digitally, makes me feel cool, and connected and popular.
NOW: I prefer in-person conversations on a dirty porch with a cold beer. And anyone not willing to participate in an epic porch hang with me is not a real friend.
What kind of “social” do I really need?
THEN: I need to make myself available to all types to help them solve problems of the marketing or business variety.
NOW: High quality relationships, with a small amount of people. My relatively small group of real friends (maybe 20 total) have earned my time, not flicking a like button on a posted photo to show them how much I care.
What’s the worse that could happen if I delete my Facebook account?
THEN: My clients may get pissed. I’ll lose money. I’ll lose friends. I’ll lose social status (remember Klout?).
NOW: My clients may be pissed. I might lose money. I might lose friends. I’ll certainly lose social status. But I can replace the time spent maintaining a hundreds of diluted relationships, with forging relationships with like minded people – new clients, and new friends. Better clients. Better friends.
Okay. So how do I delete my Facebook profile?
“Show, don’t tell … Characters are not what they say, they are what they do.” – John Jacobsen, Story Expert, Screenwriter
Scroll down for annotated screenshots of each step.
1) Let your friends know
2) Backup your account. Directions here: https://www.facebook.com/help/212802592074644
4) Don’t freak out. You will get a slew of ‘oh-shit’ emails, especially if you played around with any of Facebook’s integration tools on your website. Thankfully we already had workarounds in place for all of these.
What happens after I delete my Facebook profile?
Other than some system generated emails (see above) and the loss of any “Login with Facebook” integrations, not much.
In my case, I got two emails from Facebook friends who congratulated me on my move to California … even though it happened over a year ago 😉
Well that’s it for today. Time to turn off my laptop and go eat some grub with one of my real friends. Cheers!
