I have done it.  I have retreated. I have let go.

I have deactivated my Facebook account.

Actually, I deactivated my account a week ago.  I have not missed it as much as I would have thought before I did so.  The main problem is that occasionally in doing work or job searching I am required to look at a company’s Facebook page, which requires me to reactivate my account.  I have thus far managed to remind myself to immediately deactivate it again once I am done.

It was necessary:  although I had gotten a Facebook account to help  me keep track of my friends, especially those who live in far off places (like Los Angeles), that is not what I had ended up using it for.  Far too few people used it for that purpose, but instead spend a lot of time posting political or news links (or pictures of cats, but I was never interested in those).  I found myself literally spending hours tracking down all the links that people posted.  This was partly because it is a good way to procrastinate about doing the things that need to be done, but it also fit into my weird obsession with factual truth. A friend — or a friend of a friend — would post a link to a piece that seemed suspiciously partisan (and partisan on either side; although most of my friends are liberal, not all of them are),  and I would feel compelled to read the link to see if there were logical inconsistencies in the piece, run it through Snopes it if made claims that could possibly be urban legend, and generally set out to challenge the windmills.

I would then comment, posting links to rebuttals, pointing out fallacies (the number of people willing to engage in ad hominem attacks both on the left and the right is staggering), and generally “setting the record straight.”  Although occasionally people would thank me, most of the time they wouldn’t.

Engaging in this behavior is bad for me.  It is bad because it eats up too much of my time; if I am going to procrastinate, it should be doing something creative or more mentally engaging than trying to pick holes in other people’s political bubbles.  I should write, or at the very least, blog, or I should read.  I read far too little these days.  If I am to ever improve as a writer, I need to be exposed to as much good writing as possible. Even more importantly, I absolutely have to find a job.  I am looking, but still…

It is bad because I find myself getting news from sources which do not always know what they are talking about.  For example, late last year there were two rape cases (one in California, the other in Connecticut) which caused outrage in liberal circles and widespread condemnation of the judges involved.  The judges were in fact only ruling in accordance with the laws in question; the progressive stories about the cases did not focus on the role of the prosecution in mishandling them so that the judge in each had no choice but to rule in favor of the defendant.  In this case, I possess the skills and knowledge to be able to assess the accuracy of what I was reading, but what about cases, such as on financial matters, where I don’t?

It is bad because reading partisan sources tends to reinforce your own viewpoints at the risk of becoming ill-informed.  I am best served by being exposed to all points of view: I can usually learn more from my opposition than I can by the members of what is increasingly becoming an echo chamber.  If nothing else, I can learn how they think, and where they fail to understand or account for problems, both of which are useful.

Most of all, it is bad because it gives me an inflated view of  my importance in the world.  Arrogance is never attractive, even if you are being arrogant in the service of ideas you hold dear. I will defend the values I believe in, but I need to be respectful and caring of others while doing so, even when I know they’re wrong. I need to do this regardless of how others conduct themselves: treating people properly is a matter of self-respect for me.

I am still going to be exposed to the progressive point of view:  I can thank Slacktivist, and more aggressively, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, for that.  I will be reading more news from more mainstream sources.  Instead of Mother Jones, which can be useful but can also be shallow, I will be reading more of the New York Times and, even better, the Tampa Bay Times, which is the best newspaper in the country.  (I still cannot help but think of it as the St. Petersburg Times.)

I still have a host of links saved; links I want to write about.  Hopefully I will get to them soon.  (One post I keep meaning to write is about a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Recognizing Conscience in Abortion Provision.”) And there are blogs which will send me elsewhere in search of stories.  I know from experience, however, that I spend less time, am less captured by, blogs than I am by the fountain of material spewing forth from Facebook.

There are things I will miss: there were several friends who actually wrote updates about their lives, especially when momentous things happened. (Snowstorms, for example.) One friend from law school actually posts mostly about his life and family, and I am going to miss reading his updates, not the least because he is a pretty funny guy.  And interacting with others on Facebook during the Oscars and Superbowl was a blast.

I may well return to Facebook before too long.  After all, I thought I had walked away from blogging, only to be gone three weeks.

I’m sure Facebook will survive just fine in my absence.