Back on FB

After 2 weeks in Facebook withdrawal the powers to be at FB have decided that we are not such transgressors after all - and have reactivated our account this morning.

Why our account was disabled in the first place remains a mystery. “Fred” sent a note stating that I have access to it again – and apologizing for the inconvenience. No clues about what evil deed we were supposed to have done (perhaps block too many of those inane quizzes??).

I guess when you have 200 million people using your service – and no one giving you any money directly - it is not surprising that it will take some time to getting around to dealing with glitches.

The more sobering part of the story was how much I had come to see the bit of Facebook territory that has our name on it as ‘ours’. It isn’t. At the end of the day they can shut it down and that is that.

During my 2 weeks of the enforced “Facebook fast” I realized a few home truths:

1) I have become far to enmeshed in the service for comfort. It sometimes takes going through something of a cold-turkey withdrawal to see how much a part of you it has become.

2) Of the 900 odd folks who are listed as friends, 2 noticed that I was not around and wrote to me to find out why. OK, it

3) Most of my social networking takes place in real time with people around me – especially my immediate family. We were blessed to have 3 amazing visits in the past 10 days – and having a cup of chai with someone in our home beats hundreds of mini-scraps of conversations that take place virtually

4) But…. the strange thing about FB is this – that you do ‘get a little bit’ about folks from various walks of life – and by ‘listening in’ to the scraps of info people are broadcasting it is possible to at least feel the pulse of so many all around the globe.

So at the end of the day it is down to this:

Will remain on Facebook for now – at least for a bit more (would want to somehow back up my contacts addresses – but FB stores the emails as images and does not make for easy retrieval).

Want to exercise a severe curb on how often I go on. Every other day? Having been at times accessing multiple times a day in the not too distant past – I think that this should be tried out at least.

The wander through the virtual world continues (with links to the carbon based and spirit filled one of course).