Dry January: Facebookmageddon

It’s Dry January, I’ve kicked the booze, I’ve done a 15k bike ride, and a 5k walk, and it’s still only January 1st, but what is more liberating is that I’ve given up Facebook - for [at least] the month.

I’ve always been against Facebook for business, it’s simply not a B2B tool. It should be for your friends, your family, and some leisure and consumer brands that you want to have a light-hearted relationship with. I lock my profile down, and warn any potential work cross-over friends that this is not a professional site. This is me having fun and keeping in touch, not that you’ll find anything particularly controversial, but you will find a lot of memes and far too many cat pictures.

Why I’ve done this, and why I’ve encouraged others to do this, is it isn’t real anymore. You’re being ad-served click bait; key words and cookies, that are personally designed to draw you in to spend more time with ‘the book’. What’s wrong with just showing me an advert – bring back banners, bring back MPUs, I realise it’s there to make money, not connect me with someone who I didn’t really speak to a school 25 year ago, but suddenly have a compulsion to ‘like’ their holiday snaps.

My background is TV, and in the UK, broadcasters accrue 9 minutes of advertising for every clock hour they broadcast. With a few other regulations, they are allowed to save up their 24 x 9 minutes and play 12 minutes of ads in any given hour, should they so wish. Can’t we have something more like this with our social sites. Rather than content designed to waste my procrastination time with hidden and adjacent advertising, just make me watch 9 minutes of ‘proper’ ads for every 51 minutes of my life that I give you. I actually enjoy it: proper well-constructed intelligent adverting.

There is a second reason I’ve left and that’s negativity, those who’ve been to a Brief Doctor session will hear me harp on about it. With the global political situation as it is, and I particularly highlight Brexit in the UK, there is absolutely no on-line respect for differing opinion.  Politics has become like football teams: blind, unfailing loyalty to the cause: no sense, no science, and experts wholly ignored; it’s Red or Blue, Left of Right – there’s no common sense, and no centre ground. It’s become harmful, and it’s become boring, and we should all take a break.

Don’t think this is limited to Facebook. I still have a Twitter account, but rarely use it, as that just seems to be a notice board for bullies: life’s too short for that kind of negativity.

So, at the end of my New Year rant to the world, I’ve not deleted my Facebook account, I’ve not even deactivated it, I’ve just logged out for about a month. It’s my digital detox: #Facebookmageddon

The Brief Doctor