Facebook Diet

I'm going on a diet.  I'm going to try and cut back - on Facebook.

Though useful as a tool for connection with others, Facebook has also turned into a veritable 3-ring circus for those looking for approval, attention, drama, love, and friendship.  Not that there's anything wrong with those things, per se, but it's just gotten to be too much.  All the emotions and news, all the things I wish I never read (or rather were just not written in the first place), everything flooding my brain every time I click on to my computer.

I am a very private person, and seeing everyone else's life spread out like a glossy magazine in front of me is a bit overwhelming.  I feel odd in this unbalanced digital give-and-take, where I just found out that you ate an Italian Hoagie, and 6 people liked this.  Does this mean I should go eat an Italian Hoagie?  Would 6 more people like me then?  What if it was a Tuna Hoagie?  Why do I even care if people like what I eat?

I seem to be an odd personality.  I am highly private and don't share any info with anyone, unless there's a darn good reason to.  And yet, when I see the highly personal lives of my Facebook "friends" commented on, dissected and digested, it makes me feel like I should share more, so that I will get the same amount of social interaction.  Before, I never would have known how often so-and-so went on dates with their boyfriend, but now it's all out in the open, all in my face, reminding me that do this, and you'll be "liked."  Do something else . . . and you'll be ignored.  Social approval can now be quantified in the number of times you get a "like" on that post.  It's made social interaction, hard enough as that is to begin with, a competitive sport.

I don't really need that, the feeling that I need to work to be a digital winner in the Facebook Games.  I've got enough to work on as it is.