A Year After I Permanently Deleted Facebook

And tried to return (for work)

Erik Marty van Mechelen

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“Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.”

Did you, like me, permanently delete your Facebook account last year? Why did you do it?

I asked myself this very question a few days ago. To my analytical yet generous mind, there is a distribution of reasoning.

These range from ideological to practical. From concerns of privacy to a desire to create free time to reallocate toward my updated medium-term goals, like learning to code at an amateur level and to grasp the history of money.

Since I subscribe to theories of mimetic desire, part of me feels as though I quit Facebook because other people were doing it, which in itself is not always by itself a good reason for doing anything (if you’ll allow me to understate my point).

I didn’t pause or suspend or disable my account: I permanently deleted it. Part of me feels that I permanently deleted it to prove to myself that I could. (When I played online poker, I occasionally entertained folding pocket aces pre-flop to demonstrate I could make a bad play, to illustrate that I–whatever “I” is–was in charge.)

A year later, what are the Pros and Cons of the decision?

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